Letting Your Child Swim on Her Own
June 01, 2010, By Jason Avant 2 comments
“Wanna go in the water? Wanna go swim?” I felt a small hand squeeze my finger, and then got her answer.
“No, daddy. I don’t want to go swim.”
Be positive, I thought to myself. Smile. She loves the pool. You just need to remind her of her last lesson.
We – I say “we”, but really, I had very little to do with the actual swimming part – started the latest round of swimming lessons the past week. She’d done her first session of swim lessons last year, and had flourished. Of course, I was right in the pool there with her, holding her up, encouraging her (“Kick! Kick! Blow bubbles! Blow bubbles!”). She was joyous – all red hair and giggles, a miniature Ariel. She was utterly fearless, unlike me; having come through some nasty scrapes while surfing and scuba diving, I have a healthy respect for the water. A benign flat, warm, and filtered pool can kill you just as easily as an icy, dark and fulminating ocean. She didn’t know any of that, of course. Toddlers have no sense of their own mortality. She’d stand at the pool’s edge and leap into the water, squealing with delight. She’d come up sputtering and laughing.
This time would be different. Transitional Two’s, the YMCA called this stage – the 2-year-olds would be in the pool sans parents, just them and their teachers. I’d be sitting on the benches beside the pool, watching, trying not to look nervous. As we walked into the indoor facility, she knew something was up – she was wearing her swimsuit, and I was still in my street clothes. Some of her classmates were already sitting on the concrete pool steps, playing with rubber ducks and frogs while the instructors read off the names. “Zoë?” This was the same instructor she’d had last time. “That’s you!” I said. She leaned into my leg. “I don’t wanna swim, daddy.” “Sure you do! Let’s sit down in the water.” I walked her over to the steps; she put her feet in gingerly, even though the water temperature was high enough that it made the air in the enclosure thick and tropical. She sat, the ruffled edges of her blue swim diaper poking out from beneath her suit. I walked over to the benches. Immediately my mind began doing calculations – eight, maybe 10 feet to the side of the pool, I could cover that ground in two seconds, in the water in less than three if I needed to rescue her. (Never mind the two instructors for her class of five kids, or the small army of lifeguards hovering right at the water’s edge.)
I don’t know exactly when I took my first swimming lesson – second grade? Third? I wasn’t two, that’s for sure. My parents dropped me off at the pool and went to do "parent stuff" while I splashed and flailed. Back then I had no way of knowing if it was a big deal for them to leave me in the (I hoped) capable hands of the swim teachers. It made it easy, in a way. I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter, couldn’t complain to mom or dad about being tired or cold or hungry. I had two options: sink or swim.
I didn’t sit on the benches; rather, I leaned up against the wall, watching her, reading her. Her eyes didn’t leave mine, and they told me all I needed to know. There was no fear – she didn’t try to get up and run to me, she wasn’t crying or clinging to her instructor. She just…”didn’t wanna.” Parenting is a clash of wills and the decisions parents make often occur in the heat of battle. Training matters less than experience. In that moment, I knew two things: we’d spent hours together in the pool and in the ocean and she really did love the water, and putting your child in someone else’s hands is always a big deal.
“Daddy?” she asked. “Swim, baby!” I answered, then turned and walked away.
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