Swimming Lessons

Mitch has been having swimming lessons on Wednesday mornings for the last three weeks. The first week Meeks took him and he screamed and wailed and cried, constantly trying to get out of the pool. Meeks was there with the twins and had a nightmare balancing act trying to keep Mitch in the pool, while not letting the twin who was strapped to her front fall into the water and the twin in the pram get splashed. In short it was a total disaster. As Meeks left the mother of the other child in Mitch's little group said, "Are you coming back next week?" in an accusatory tone.

Last week I took Mitch without the twins. Pretty much the same thing happened except there were no twins to worry about so I pretty much kneeled on the floor the whole time trying to convince Mitch that every thing was okay and that he needed to stay in the water and the swimming instructor was nice and friendly and there were no sharks in the water who were going to eat him. He was a little bit better than the week before, and the other mother was nice enough to say so, but I walked out with my nerves wrecked from the screaming and the distress at seeing Mitch distressed. The odd thing was that on the way to swimming he was talking about how much fun swimming lessons were and as soon as he was out of the pool and getting changed he was saying how much fun he had had and he was looking forward to coming back the next week. Obviously the experience didn't scar him emotionally like it had done to me!

Now, as an aside, this is all very unusual for Mitch. He normally loves swimming in pools and indeed when we were in Queensland at the start of the year he would cry whenever we told him it was time to get out of the water. Equally he loves swimming at Nana and Poppy's house too and was making really good progress towards the end of last summer.

So it was with great trepidation that I took Mitch off to swimming lessons this morning. Meeks had bought him a little lego workman with a cement mixer as a bribe, saying he would only get it if he was a good boy. Mitch was very excited. We got to swimming and he needed to do a wee, so we went off to the unpleasant toilets and then went back down to the pool. With 5 minutes to go til his lesson he said he needed to do a poo, so by now I was thinking, "Oh no!", so we went back to the toilets and he finished his business and we went back to the pool. Finally, it was time for his lesson to start, so I took off his jumper and held my breath. Much to my surprise he wandered over to the teacher without a peep, climbed into the water and proceeded to have a great time for the next 30 minutes. Not only was there no evidence of the crying from previous weeks, he was playing and laughing and squealing with delight. He was doing everything the teacher told him to and he was having fun doing it. I was amazed and so was the other mother. I think she thought I had brought a different child. In fact after the lesson one of the other mothers from a child in one of the other classes came up and remarked on how great it was that he was enjoying himself this time.

Mitch was very excited to receive his lego workman with cement mixer and we were delighted to give it to him. I guess this was a bit of a lesson in perseverence for us. It is really important to us that Mitch learns to swim as soon as possible. Every summer you hear the horrible, horrible stories about toddlers drowning in backyard pools.