First off, you should know that I have a water phobia and I can barely swim. My parents did make me take swim lessons, but as an adult I can just about flounder across a pool once. I wish I could swim, and I wish I wasn't afraid. We live by the water, my husband swims, and even just for canoe trips, it holds me back that I can't swim.
When Hypatia was a baby, I was trying to get 3 year old Carbon to get in the water and swim. He was a reluctant swimmer, refusing to even get in the water, and the whole thing was horribly upsetting for me. So, thinking I would be preventing further stress with the next child, we did baby swim lessons with Hypatia.
Then we just couldn't take the stress with Carbon, so we quit swim classes and decided to wait until he was ready.
A year and half later, I decided to try the YMCA swim lessons, and Carbon almost immediately took to it like a fish. The instructors were fantastic, pushing him just enough, praising him just enough, and getting him swimming in record time.
I patted myself on the back and felt like I had done a good job as a mother, preparing my child for a lifetime of comfort in the water. I'm a Good Mother!
We took a break from lessons over the summer, and then I signed up both children last Fall. Carbon returned to the water, and continued to do well. But Hypatia - well Hypatia did not do well. Our first lessons she refused to get in the water and she screamed. We finally coaxed her into sometimes participating, but she would still get out and sit on my lap for most of the lesson. We ran into a teacher that was NOT good with her, and it got so bad we just stopped the lessons again.
The entire experience had me shaken, but I had my previous experience of Carbon to remember, and I thought it would still be OK. I was an OK Mother.
But when we went back a few months later, in a different time slot and with different teachers, she screamed for the whole 45 minute lesson! In a crowded row of parents, I sat there and gritted my teeth for weeks as she cried and screamed in the lessons. She still got in the water, but she screamed she wanted her mommy, she screamed that she didn't want to do what they told her to do, and she screamed just because.
I was in a bind now, though, because Carbon was still progressing, but if I pulled her out, he wanted to quit too. And I just kept thinking, surely this time she'll be OK. Between lessons we would talk about it, and she would say that she was fine and she wanted to swim, and then BAM, right back to screaming during the class. Now I was the BAD Mother, who everyone looked at askance. In fact, other mothers started to make not-so-subtle comments to me about "pushing too much" and "how sorry for her" they felt. So now I was The Really BAD Mother.
Eventually she stopped screaming. She still cried, and she still wouldn't let go of the instructor. The instructor asked me if something traumatic had happened to her, because she was just progressing so slowly. No, nothing traumatic - except for having a Really Bad Mother, that is.
At this point, I broke out the parenting tool I like to use as little as possible - pure bribery. "If you are brave in swim class, I'll give you a treat". I bought two bags of gummy shark candies, and for each brave thing she did, I told her she'd get a candy. We had one bad day, when she did really poorly in class but climbed out of the pool saying "gummy sharks now!". When I told her No candy that day, I ended up having to carry a Temper Tantrum Terror out of the gym.
So, now I was a Bad Mother for pushing too much, and a Bad Mother for engaging in behaviorism with - of all things! - junk food as a reward.
But, it actually worked. She got over her fear as she kept doing "brave" things on purpose in order to get a reward. I got rid of the structured reward system, and instead one day after a very good lesson I took her to the toy store and bought her a toy mermaid, "for being my wonderful mermaid girl". One time we stopped for milk shakes after a lesson.
And yesterday, she really took a huge leap forward. She was in the pool, just going for it. She has decided she can swim "all by herself" (she can't yet), so she was asking the instructors to stay way back while she just went for it. She swam all the way across the pool on her back, with no help. And she did it all just because she wanted to. When she got out of the pool, there was no mention of a treat - just high fives all around. So now I'm back to being a Good Mother, and I'm on the road to having two swimmers.
There are so many ups and downs to this parenting path.
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