Sugie has always loved the water and also also always loved her floaties. She started using floaties the summer before her 2nd birthday. Just like anything else in parenting people have given me their opinions (usually negative) about the dangers of floaties! To be honest I have never been that worried about it but always did find it funny people liked to let me know how horrible they were. Anyway, she has been getting around the last few summers with the floaties...jumping in and even swimming like she had seen the other kids. I worked with her on kicking and blowing bubbles etc. The year that Mckenzie was a baby I juggled both of them at the pool and so I told her almost every time..."Do not get in the pool with out your floaties. You will sink." She listened so well that she really thought that she would sink without them! oops!
Anyway, at the end of last summer she would let me work with her without her floaties on swimming but really didn't want to do it. I figured we would work on it this summer or I would put her in swim lessons. So, one day I asked her about swim lessons. She told me that she didn't want to take swim lessons that she just wanted to have her floaties so she wouldn't sink. I told her that if you learn to swim then you don't sink and that the older kids she knows don't wear floaties and that mermaids dont' wear floaties etc. She said ok that she would do swim lessons. Then I asked her if she wanted to take swim lessons in a class or take swim lessons with me. She picked ME! :) I was pretty excited and so was she. In fact she wanted me to teach her the first day we went to the pool but the water was COLD! Anyway, I told her we would start when it was warmer.
Well it still hasn't got that much warmer but we have worked about 10 minutes or so and done our "swim lessons." I found this cool website if you are looking to teacher your own child. I am a strong swimmer but wasn't really sure the best ways to start teaching a child to swim. http://www.uswim.com/home The first day she was pretty much swimming on her own but I had to hold her pinkie finger. As you can imagine holding her pinkie finger was not really helping her at all but it gave her some security. I tried sneaking it away but she would instantly stand up in the water and flip out. So we just kept doing that and I kept holding her finger.
The other day we went to the store to pick out some goggles. I thought it might help her with some confidence if she could see that I was right there in the water and nothing to be afraid of. WHile on the isle she spotted this cool dolphin thing that attaches to your back.
It came with goggles and I had already thought about getting her a back float so I let her get it. I thought it would help her practice on her own with out me. She would practice after our "lessons" with her floaties on but it was really hard for her to get in the right position with her floaties despite me taking A LOT of air out of them. :)
She loved the fin and it worked really well. We took it off a few times practiced without it and then she just let me let go of her pinkie finger. She was so excited. Trev came over after work and she stepped it up another knotch and was swimming further and further.
Here is the video that I took. I should have taken by the end of the evening because she improved so much. She was really starting to relax and just let her body float and kick lighter. I had her starting in different spots and swimming to different parts of the pool like the side, steps, etc. She did really well. She even chose to do some crazy moves like swim all the way around me and swim away from be and then back to me. She even jumped in and was swimming to the side. I wasn't sure how she would do on that since she would have to come to the top and then start swimming but she did it just fine the first time.
I am so proud of her! It is a great mom feeling when you know that you have taught them! :) We need to continue to work on back floating and then work on taking breaths. She even wants to try and dive for rings and items like she saw the kids at the pool doing.
Way to go Sugie bear! So proud of you!
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