Summer Swim Lessons

After getting home from our summer vacation, our family jumped (dove?) headfirst into another summer mainstay...swimming lessons.

I had signed Lorelai up for swimming lessons years before, when she was three and a half. It didn't work out, though...I signed her up for a group lesson, so she didn't get the personalized attention she needed to overcome her fears. As a result, nothing she was taught really sunk in (pardon the pun). For the next several years, I continued to have two (sometimes three) girls hanging off my arms in terror every time we got into the pool. Either that, or they relied on their life jackets to do all the work for them.

As of last summer, things had started to get easier. Lorelai was now a lot older, taller, and more confident in the water--she could even travel down water slides with ease. In addition, the floor of our community pool was recently redone, which lowered the water level several inches, while simultaneously raising the girls' confidence (since the pool was even shallower, they could stand up in the water for the first time). However, Celeste and Aurora were both still wearing their life jackets every time they swam, and I thought it would be good for Lorelai to learn some specific swimming movements and strokes, besides thrashing about in the water.

So this summer I decided to splurge a little and pay for a private teacher. Luckily, my friend Sarah (in our local ward) is a swim teacher and was offering private lessons to local kids for the summer. I signed Lorelai and Celeste up together, so that the two of them would both receive instruction over the course of one half hour. The lessons were to be every morning at 8:30 for two weeks, Monday through Friday...and the very first lesson was June 17th, the day after our long drive home from Vegas!

Not being a morning person, and this being summer, we didn't get there exactly on time every day. But we made it nevertheless, and it was really interesting to see how the girls progressed. Lorelai was more confident in the water from the start, so she was easier to instruct. However, her overconfidence may have been her weakness as well; sometimes she would practice a move once, and then start to goof off, which meant her time wasn't always super effective. For the most part, though, she listened to her teacher and figured out a bunch of new tricks...including a few we'll have to keep working on! Lorelai's freestyle stroke showed steady improvement (but she still has some work to do on coordinating her breathing and kicking), and her breaststroke (or "frog kick," as she called it) was actually quite good! She also got better at floating on her back, and learned to tread water too.

Celeste's progress was even more dramatic. Her first few days were difficult; she clung desperately to me and to Miss Sarah and cried several times. It was very strange to me; before this, she had always been the most confident of my three girls in the water. Those first few days of lessons had me thinking that her confidence had been an illusion, brought on by her life jacket.

But then, she surprised me, and made me very proud too. After one of the lessons had ended badly, I suggested to Celeste that she say a prayer to Heavenly Father so that she could have more courage. She took me seriously; that night in our family prayer, she included a request that she "not be scared in the pool any more." And she took it one step farther the next morning; before getting in the water, she ran over to her beach towel and said another little prayer to herself. And lo and behold! She dove right into the water and completed the task Miss Sarah gave her!

From that time on, Celeste prayed every morning at the pool before starting the lesson (and sometimes in the middle of the lesson), and she improved by leaps and bounds! By the end of the two weeks, Celeste was completely underwater, swimming from the wall halfway across the pool to me, or to Miss Sarah. She was jumping in without fear. She was holding her breath and coming up for air at appropriate times. She was fearless, just as I'd thought she could be! The power of prayer, ladies and gents.

After the two weeks were done, both girls had earned their certificates of completion...

...and some cookies Miss Sarah baked for them.

Aurora even got a cookie, too! She often "sat in" on the lessons, and was as excited to be at the pool as everyone else. Overall, I'm glad I paid a little extra, because it really paid off. I'm not sure if I'll do swimming lessons next summer, but I will definitely do lessons the year after that; when ALL my girls can take them! It's going to be a lot more fun going to the pool with my family, now that my girls are gaining confidence as swimmers. I'm very proud.