Tonight was a not-so-normal night, in that Will (and I) went to the pool. But there was a reason — he was invited to a birthday party in a nearby neighborhood. We got lucky with the weather — it rained on the group a couple of times, but there was never a peal of thunder. (The forecast had 60% probability of thunderstorms.) That meant Will could stay for over 2 hours of pool time with his friends. And yes, with me. I did get in.
The one cool thing this pool had was a diving board. And Will saw a few of his friends jumping off it into the deep part. Oh, he so wanted to jump there, but he understood that he didn’t have the skills to do it. I only started to teach him how to tread water last Sunday.
Well, he overcame his fears and now has opened new possibilities for himself (whether he realizes it or not). I made him understand that he needed to start jumping on his own (instead of me catching him) in the 5 foot area before he’d be close to ready for jumping in the deep end. That didn’t happen for a while, and the first couple times, he tried jumping further out (toward me), meaning he was nearly belly-flopping in. Ouch.
But eventually, we worked through it (I moved closer to the edge and closer to the 4 foot area, where he can stand, catching him but allowing him to go under water), and soon he was jumping in, getting back above the water, and swimming a couple of lane distance to me. Hooray!
Later on, after I had gotten out, he got really adventurous. He swam half the length of the pool, chasing a couple of friends, through the deeper area (where he couldn’t put his feet down). Nothing like that added incentive to keep yourself going. He also went over to the 5 foot area and started jumping in, then turning around and stroking back to the edge.
He saved the best for last, as we were getting ready to leave. He jumped in at one corner (before the rope to the diving area) and surfaced. And then, instead of coming to the closer wall, which he had been doing previously, he started swimming to the other side, even stopping briefly to tread water while I asked him if he really wanted to swim all the way across the opening to the diving area to the other wall. (Distance-wise, this is similar to the sizing at my parents’ pool.) And he did it.
So now, he has no excuse. He’s shown me he can pretty much handle all aspects of at least our neighborhood pool (which is much smaller than this one, with a truly deep area). Endurance on swimming is still a little issue, but going half of a 25-yard pool shows he can do it when he puts his mind to it. And when he visits Nana and Grampa in August, he can show them all of his new swimming skills and abilities.
The only regret is that there are no pictures of him doing any of this. I was in the pool too much to take pictures/video, and just forgot the last few times he was doing anything.
Anyway — congrats, Will! That’s some awesome swimming you did today.
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