Swimming Lessons

The favorite after swimming actvity- Climbing THE WALLLilly dressed for the pool and stuck her toes in once, but we still thought she was a little young to go for her first swim
Charlie with his teacher finally smiling by the last day
Jack with his teacher- he's probably winning the splashing the teacher contest (there's one in every crowd...)
Charlie when they finally figured out he wasn't afraid of the water and could actually swim

Scary Charly with demon eyes...

Charlie and Jack each took swimming lessons at the Rec center in Bountiful. They both did great. My goals were not necessarily that they would learn to swim better (because I can teach them that) but that they would have fun and practice listening to an instructor and another adult. Charlie struggled the first week and had several breakdowns stating that he did not want to get in the pool with his teacher. They called in the crying specialist and he did a little better but as soon as he got near an edge he would jump out and run to me and refuse to get back in. His teacher was very young and inexperienced and kept trying to teach him breastroke, which is kind of ridiculous for an almost three year old. I didn’t want him to have a bad experience and I debated just pulling him out and waiting for next year, but since Jack was still going, I didn’t want Charlie to feel like he got his way because of his tantrums. So many changes, with his Daddy being gone, it was easy to see why Charlie was being so clingy. The next week I got in with him and he did GREAT. He was able to show them that he wasn’t afraid of the water that he can float and he learned to relax on his back float. By the end of the week, Charlie had decided that if I just put my toes in the water and promised to watch him in his lesson that was good enough.

Jack got better at treading, he is very good at diving off the side and getting rings off the bottom, and after being threatened with losing a token, he was able to keep his head above water and listen to his teacher.