Clara has always loved to swim. Actually, she loves water in general, but she really enjoys swimming. Last summer I didn't feel the need to put her in swimming lessons because she was so young and at that age, most of the options (within my budget) seemed to be classes to get kids used to the water. She definitely didn't need any coaxing to get in the water. This summer is half over and I never signed her up for lessons. Why? Pretty much just plain laziness*. Besides, I kept telling myself there's no reason I can't teach her myself. Clara uses one of those 99 cent rings and jumps in and swims all around without incident. Yesterday, I decided enough of the ring, she's perfectly capable of learning. I lasted about 5 minutes, but luckily, my mom got in the pool and worked her grandma magic. Clara was swimming to us from the step and back to the step within about 10 minutes. She kept saying, "Move back more!" In the process, she learned that she absolutely loves the feeling of just floating in the water. She started floating away from the step, "dancing" under the water (hilarious) and then swimming back to the step. Well, sometimes she'd swim back. You see, she has little fear and does not get the risk of not being able to get a breath of air in time. If she wasn't ready to come up, she'd push my hands away when I tried to help. She can hold her breath for a while, but she isn't always able to get back to the step and to go up for air in time. She was put in time out twice when she jumped off the step when I was not by her. We stopped altogether when she inhaled so much water it made her puke her peach up, which didn't phase her.
Before she was ultra confident in the water with her ring and never let go of it. Now she's ultra confident in the water with no ring, which makes me super duper nervous.
*Sometimes I think I am a little too honest with Clara. If she asks me to do something, sometimes I tell her I'm too lazy. Today it backfired when I asked her to do something and she told me she was too lazy. :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Way to go teaching her yourself.
Next summer will be our summer to teach swimming & I'll see if I have it in me to teach her myself.
But yes, I am Lazy too, so we will see :)
Baahaaa, I love the lazy comment. That is totally something Douglas would do. In fact, he has ! I remember once he told me " you're driving me crazy " which is a commonly used term of endearment around our home : )
Douglas was never excited about the pool - which made me happy. He would only sit on the step and didn't dare venture anywhere else. I didn't worry about him around the pool. And now that he can fully swim on his own - it freaks me out sometimes ! He is a lot like Clara because he thinks he can hold his breath for " 1000 minutes " as he says !
Ha ha WOW! No fear is right! I guess you have good reason to be nervous. Cooper is not a big fan of the whole swimming thing, but I'm still trying to teach him myself this year. We will definitely do lessons next summer.
I love Clara. I'm to lazy sounds just like something Coop would pick up from me. Way to go with teaching her to swim.
i've already learned to be careful what i say around her ("don't say stupid"). you should know better than to tell her you're too lazy. but still, that's hilarious.
I wish we had a pool so I could work with my kids more! That's great she's so comfortable with the water.
It's a double edge sword, isn't it? You want them to learn, but once they start learning, they are super confident in the water, and that's scary too. I have nightmares of Melanie jumping into the deep end of my in laws pool and me not getting to her in time (even though she can tread water, float, and swim small distances). It freaks me out.
Post a Comment