Swimming

We're into our second week of swim lessons. We took over a year off with Jacob. It just didn't seem worth the money. He loves to swim, but he wasn't progressing with the skills. This time around started similar to the last. Jacob works hard when the instructors working directly with him, but goofs off and acts silly instead of waiting patiently while the other kids have their turn. I figured our only solution was to do private or semi-private lessons with him. Mel spoke with Jacob's instructor (a high school age girl) last week about ways we can help Jacob focus and keep him busy. We were impressed at his lesson yesterday when the director and another instructor helped with the class which meant Jacob had one on one instruction for the first thirty minutes of class. They also had him swim along side the other students when it wasn't his turn with the instructor rather than wait at the wall. The key was to keep him moving and not give him too much down time to get distracted. I'm very impressed with the aquatics staff for hearing our concerns and working with Jacob's needs. Hopefully they'll be able to continue doing this throughout the remainder of the lessons. It really worked well and I was so proud of Jacob. It was one of those light bulb moments when you've been trying and trying to get your child to focus and pay attention and then after taking a different approach you see your child work hard and succeed.
Kyle also started swim lessons. I'm sure he thought swim lessons meant playing in the pool and not learning swimming skills, but he still loves it and is doing really well. The night of the first lesson it was -10 and he asked, "Are we swimming outside or inside?"