Swimming Lessons

Tonight was Esther's first night of swimming lessons. She has been in swim classes twice before. Once was in utero when I did pregnancy water aerobics, and the other was when she was about 10 months old and we did a parent-tot class. Obviously she doesn't recall either of those experiences, so this was essentially her first time.

Considering the fact that she hates getting water in her face in the tub or when Peter splashes in the kiddie pool, I had a feeling that this might be a traumatic experience for her (and me). We've been talking about it for several weeks and also got there early so she could see the pool and watch part of another class. She did fine and seemed totally relaxed until it was time to start her class.

The teacher, Miss Lisa, asked the 5 girls in her class to sit on the edge of the pool and she freaked out and clung to me and got quite hysterical. I managed to get her to sit on the edge with her feet in the water as long as I was holding her. Miss Lisa then started taking turns doing various things with each of the girls such as floating on their backs, making big circles with their arms, etc... As the class progressed, she went from crying/screaming and basically being peeled away from me by the teacher each time it was her turn, to holding on to the edge as part of the train with only a little fear in her eyes, to tentatively jumping into Miss Lisa's arms, to actually kicking her feet and splashing at the end of the class! Progress! I was very impressed with Miss Lisa because she somewhat forced Esther to do things, but at the same time was very reassuring, encouraging, kind and calm with her. I think she's just what Esther needs!

Afterwards I told her I was very proud of how brave she was and that we should probably celebrate her success, so we stopped at McDonald's for an ice cream cone. She was in a great mood for the rest of the night, so hopefully she'll go into next week's class on a positive note and we'll both enjoy it more!