Swimming Lessons

Drew practicing his back float

Haley loving lessons

Sydney so happy to be swimming

Drew driving a car with a diving ring

Sydney using her kick board

Sydney doing backfloat with her noodle

Haley doing breast stroke using her noodle

This past week the kids started swimming lessons. They love their classes and teachers, but the start of the week was rough. It all started on the first day. Swim lessons are just about 1.5 miles each way, so I thought I could kill 2 birds with 1 stone and get my exercising in on a walk to and from lessons. The girls would ride their bikes and I would push Drew in a jogger. Let me preface and say that I took the girls on a bike ride about the same distance and they did just fine. Easy enough. Right? Wrong!

As we were leaving, Drew started demanding to ride his bike just like the girls. He threw a full-on temper tantrum the ENTIRE way, which took about 40 minutes from all the stopping along the way to try to calm him down. During the temper tantrum business, he decided to take off his sandals and drop them along the way. I didn't realize until minutes later. If we turned back to get them then we'd be late, so I told him we'd just have to get them on the way back and he'd go barefoot at swimming lessons. This threw him into another frenzy and the tantrum escalated, which included back thrusts, stomping the jogger, and kicking legs. People were coming out of their homes to see the mother that was beating their child. Once they found that I wasn't beating him and he was in the middle of a tantrum, I'm sure they no longer worried, but they still continued to watch me walk down the street with a crying child.

By the time we got to swimming lessons, Drew was so worked up that he didn't want to go swimming, even though he'd been looking forward to lessons for weeks. He finally got in the last 10 minutes, and then realized how much fun it was. Since then, he's been doing great, and for the most part, listening to his teacher (he is 3 afterall). On the way home, Haley got a flat tire, and Sydney was tired of riding her bike, so she let Haley ride hers, and Sydney walked while I pushed the jogger and Haley's bike. It was quite a sight. Near the end of the walk, Sydney was exhausted and complaining how far it was and how tired and hot she was, begging me to go swimming at grandma's house. I learned a huge lesson that day. I was selfish and with my desire to exercise, I made the event miserable for not only my kids but myself. After that, we drove the rest of the week to lessons. They have had enough energy to feed ducks and play on the playground at the park next to the pool. It has been much more pleasant that way.

Sydney and Haley were signed up in the same class. For the most part, they were refining strokes and basically doing laps. The pool is deep enough that they can't touch the bottom and this really tired Sydney out. She didn't complain until Wednesday. Once we got there, she did 2 laps, then refused to do more. The teachers encouraged her to use the kick board if she was too tired, but she refused that as well. I told her if she didn't swim (with the given options), then she wouldn't be allowed to swim at grandma's. She decided to face the consequences and not swim. It was just killing her when Haley & Drew swam 2 times, once in the afternoon and in the evening. I'm not joking, the entire day and night she asked me over and over and over if she could go swimming. It literally sounded like a broken record. I was about to pull my hair out. She was put in time out numerous times for her continually asking me. She quickly learned her lesson that there are consequences, and she should have swam in lessons. The next day, I dropped her down a class. She was so happy to have the same teacher, and she got to use kick boards and noodles to help swim. This is much better for all of us. I'm hoping this next week goes smoothly without any hitches.