Option C gets my vote, although I don’t know how long you can actually use an outdoor pool in your state! ??? We love ours but we have a long swimming season here in FL. LOL!
SWIM LESSONS
- By : Cynthia
- Category : Kids - Josh, Kids - Nathan
Kids - Josh
7
First things first you know (LOL)! Nathan HAD to have some goggles because his sisters always wear goggles when they swim. Of course, they were in synchronized swimming for most of his life (LOL). When you take “regular” swimming lessons, you don’t wear goggles. It wasn’t very easy convincing him he didn’t need the goggles (LOL)! He sure looks cute in them, though, doesn’t he?
It has been bothering me for quite some time that Nathan is already four years old and still doesn’t know how to swim. Some of my newer, IRL friends probably don’t know that I taught swimming lessons at the local YMCA for over ten years before “retiring” to head up the synchronized swim team.
I’ve taught hundreds of kids such complicated things as floating on their back, zip T down, and ears/eyes/blow (LOL)! Ok.. so those particular things aren’t so complicated, but I also taught rescue breathing, butterfly and other strokes, etc which were a little more complicated (LOL). Our 3 older kids all went through the YMCA swim program! They are all GREAT swimmers. The girls moved right from the last YMCA or Red Cross (the Y used both of those swim programs during my years of teaching there) swim level to synchro. Josh didn’t care to do any more “formal” swimming (swim team) after he finished his lessons. He would much rather PLAY in the water! This is more his style….
Going…going…going…. KERRRR SPLASH!
I remember growing up at the YMCA. We lived only a few blocks away when I was little. My mom used to take my brother and I to the YMCA all of the time. The smell of chlorine and swimming in the pool is one of my earliest memories. I took my (volunteer) jobs as swimming instructor and synchro coordinator quite seriously spending HOURS UPON HOURS sending out newsletters, keeping the books, organizing synchro meets, training other swim instructors, fixing the sound system, ordering and decorating costumes, renewing my swim teacher certification, etc. One year I was awarded the YMCA’s Volunteer of the Year award for all of my efforts in their Aquatic Department.
If we spend so much time at the Y, you might be wondering why our youngest child doesn’t know how to swim. You might be wondering if he’ll be forever doomed to wear a life jacket in the water?
Unfortunately, for Nathan, our local YMCA went under new management shortly after he was born and the new administration has taken the YMCA in an entirely different direction than the YMCA that I knew and loved! I won’t give you all the ugly details here on a public blog, but suffice it to say they eliminated our synchro program in the same year that YMCA National made an alliance with Synchro National. GO FIGURE! (no pun intended.. for those who don’t know that synchronized swimming is all about performing figures properly). While the National YMCA is trying to have a reciprocal relationship with US Synchro, our local YMCA shut down a program that had been in successful operation for 20+ years!
Our local YMCA has now run off a good # of the people who had been there making the YMCA the great place that it was and have brought in new people who are less than friendly and have a different, non family oriented, vision (imo). So, Nathan will not have swim lessons at the YMCA and I won’t give another dime to our local YMCA as long as I can help it. I will have to give some $$ to it in order for our kids to be able to participate in a few of the homeschool sports program that still use their gyms, but other than that.. our days at the local YMCA are over. It’s been sad to come to that realization since I have such fond memories of the Y in my growing up years and having spent 8-10 hours a week there as our girls were growing up.
Josh still remembers his swim lesson days and decided he would teach Nathan a thing or two about swimming this summer.
Then Josh’s friend, Jameson, decided to get in on the action (or lack thereof – lol) while showing Nathan how to lay still while floating!
WHEW.. it’s hard working teaching a little one to swim. Josh decided he better go sit leisurely in the shallow end and leave the hard work up to mom (LOL)!
So…. now that we can’t go to the YMCA anymore, I’m going to have to come up with some sort of plan for teaching Nathan how to swim. It’s unthinkable that he’s 4 and doesn’t know how to swim! Again, most of our other kids were swimming independently by the time they were 2 (one was age 5 but that was an exception and we’ll let that child remain nameless).
This summer one of our good friends, Kim, let us come over to their pool so I could give Nathan a few lessons! She has all the right toys, nice warm water, and a WONERFUL POOL! It’s all PERFECT for teaching swim lessons!
A nice shallow end for Nathan to play in when we aren’t doing a “lesson” and the deep end complete with slide for the bigger kids… see picture of Josh going down the slide up above.
REALLY COOL umbrellas to shade the moms while we visit and watch the kids play.
Kim, MANY THANKS to you and your family for letting us come over to give Nathan a few swim lessons and for letting Josh come over to play so often! We REALLY appreciate it!
You know the summer’s are really short clear up north here where we live. At the rate of a few lessons every summer Nathan will be OLD before he ever learns to swim.
So, next year I’ll either have to:
a) strike a deal with Kim to go to her house several times a week
b) find somewhere to take Nathan for lessons (gasp.. he would be our only child that *I* didn’t teach how to swim… and…… would have to PAY someone else to teach)
or
c) build a swimming pool ourselves so we can have a lesson everyday!
What a cutie out there in the water! He thinks after a couple of lessons he can take off on his own! NOT! He’s at the stage where it’s quite dangerous for him to be near the water. He lacks the ability to swim by himself yet thinks he can swim!
So… we’ll act on one of the above plans for next summer. At least I have all winter to figure out what to do. In ALL of our years past, we would just now be entering our fall schedule which would have included spending 1/2 a day at the local YMCA every Saturday. This will be our first full year to not spend part of every Saturday at the. Yet another season of life has slipped in the past! I wish we could have gotten Nathan through swim lessons before the Y up and changed their program direction… sigh…..
Stay tuned for next year! Nathan HAS TO LEARN to swim next summer!
