Swimming - at last! ⇒

Oh it has been a wonderful week. As you all know, Elise has her "little" anxieties. One of these has historically been a wariness of the water. This time last year, I took her to Sunnyside Pool and it took 45 minutes to get her in the water. When I finally did, she clung to me like a barnacle until I took her foot and placed it on the bottom of the pool so she could see she could touch. To her, you see, the big size of the pool meant that it was also too deep for her. It is lower than my waist when I stand, just so you get the picture! Anyway, in October, she finally agreed to do swimming lessons but at our local pool, they do lessons in the big pool which is a little chilly and a little deep (though she would have been able to comfortably touch and have her head out of the water). I decided to find another location for the swimming lessons and four a pool about 25 minutes drive from us that has a gradual entry. The lessons we a success! We took a short break over Christmas which set her back for the next session but by June she and Daniella had both passed to preschool level 3. This summer, I enrolled the girls at Sunnyside Pool for 2 weeks every day. At the end of the set, Daniella passed and Elise didn't. She was upset that she and Daniella wouldn't be in the same class anymore but not bothered that she hadn't passed. I did another set of the 2 week lessons that ended this past Friday. Daniella passed to the next level and Elise would still not let her instructor let go of her so again she didn't pass. I took them back to the pool for public swim that afternoon and Elise wore her goggles and was dunking her head and treading water. I told her "you know you are swimming when you do that?" and she goes "I am?" so I said to do it again and use her arms to move toward me. She did. After that she was swimming back and forth between the wall and me underwater over and over again. I was so thrilled! I wanted to shout it out loud and there was no one there I knew to share it with. What a milestone! Elise, my love, I am so proud of you right now. It is so hard to do things out of our comfort zone and in one year you have gone from being too afraid to get in the water to swimming 3 meters under water by yourself.