Little Fishy -

This month Kate has taken swim lessons. With my parents basically living at the lake, we definitely want our kids to learn about water safety and how to swim, as soon as possible. This is the 3rd year Kate has done swim lessons, and they are finally starting to pay off!

I’d have liked for her to have started the lessons earlier in the summer but it just didn’t work out. With vacations and other things going on in May and June, we didn’t want to pay for lessons and her miss 1/4 of the classes. July has been a good swimming month though!

My expectations of swimming lessons were this- they would teach her how to not drown.

The reality is that they have been teaching her the proper way to do the freestyle and backstroke, as well as how to float on her back. I’d have been happy with the doggy paddle, so this exceeded my expectations!

And since Kate is so tall for her age, she can easily touch in the area of the pool where they practice. I think being able to touch the bottom gives her confidence in what she’s doing, so she isn’t scared at all. She has no problem going underwater without holding her nose and is willing to try just about anything that her teacher asks…

Until they go over to the deep end of the pool. The first 3 classes they spent the last 5-10 minutes of the class in the deep end. On the first class, they just jumped in. Kate wouldn’t do it.

At the second class, they were supposed to jump in and then the teacher tried to teach them to dive. Kate wouldn’t do it.

Same thing at the third class. She just couldn’t get up her courage, and if she doesn’t want to do something, she is NOT going to do it. So she didn’t.