At the beginning of the year, a few of you will remember the post I done about swimming, and how nervous I was for Spud to attend swimming lessons with the school without me present, I just wanted to give a update on that subject and quite a different update it is too!
For those of you who don't know, I lived on a canal boat when I was younger, for quite a few years in fact! I was the rag doll Rosie from Rosie and Jim, with my brother Jamie being Jim, we didn't have a duck though, however we did have a canine friend! Both me and my brother have fond memories of our time on the boat and if you should ask any of us what our fondest memory is, it's of swimming and the awards we won through our swimming achievements.
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Being the adult version of the child who once swam in the river Thames, and who helped the school swimming teacher teach other children how to swim, it's quite important to me that Spud knows how to swim. However it saddens me that he's not yet got the full swing of things. After having Spud and having all the health care issues, my weight slowly started rising until I had zero confidence to step foot in a pool.
With help from a few supportive friends and family and my Purifyne reset days, I lost some weight and started exercising via exercise swimming sessions twice a week. It had been around six years since I swam in water myself, and before I took Spud out for a swim, I knew I had to be confident myself, thankfully by the second session my confidence in the water reappeared as though I had never had a break!
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Games wasn't a strategy that worked for either myself or Spud, checking his arm bands that I picked up from Splash About was firmly on correctly, I would pretend that a shark was trying to pull me away from Spud, I would call for Spud to help me, but after seeing the confused little look on his face, I didn't want to worsen his fears or knock his confidence any more!
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Bribery didn't work either, promising Spud a trip to the toy shop if he swam a certain amount of yards wasn't working, neither was the promise of his favourite takeaway Chinese for tea! I'm sure even if I said to Spud ''we can go to Disney Land for the week if you do a lap around the pool'' it would not get him moving!
What did work, was continuous praise for the times he stepped a foot closer to me, even if he took ten steps backwards, praise for the times he would wrap his arms tightly around my neck, and let me give him a swimming piggyback (even though he did nearly choke me a few times!) and the praise for the time he went down the baby slide all by himself! Pushing a child into the deep end, or expecting them to feel confident in something you're confident in is not nice.
I might be okay to jump out of a plane, but would you jump out of a plane with me? It's the same for children, don't ever push them too much, give them extra time, don't be too pushy, be full of praise and take every small achievement as a massive achievement! Use swimming aids such as goggles, floats and arm bands, reward them small, praise them lots and be there always!
We're getting there, slowly, but it's progress! Maybe I'll be writing a post next month telling you about Spud taking his own independent five laps of the pool and jumping off the diving board, or maybe I'll be telling you about that in three months, or next year. I have confidence in my son, and I know my son has confidence in me!
If you have any tips on swimming with children, we would love to hear any suggestions you may have!
Kind regards,
Jada x