Cason's swimming lessons

Cason has never had swim lessons before. I wanted to put him in when he was a toddler but I was pregnant with Bryce and thought it would be a waste if I couldn't continue with them. All the classes are parent and tot below 3 years old so I wouldn't have been able to swim with him when Bryce was a baby (no one to watch Bryce) so swim lessons weren't an option when he was 2. When he was 3, we knew from other experiences that he's slow to warm up to things like that and it would have been a waste of money to put him in because we were 99% sure he'd just sit and refuse to do anything. But now that he's almost 4, we decided it was time to at least introduce him to lessons. We decided to go for private lessons because given his personality, we knew he'd need 1 on 1 attention to succeed. I asked an acquaintance for the name and number of a swim instructor she highly recommended and set up 2 weeks of lessons for Cason.

Cason hates water on his face/head and last summer in the pool was content to get in no deeper than waist high. He never wanted to go in the deep end, even with me holding him. In the bathtub, he would freak out if a drop of water splashed on his face and ask for a towel. So we knew that his instructor would be in for a challenge.

He ended up doing good about half of the days. The other half of the days were filled with crying and refusal to do what Ms. Jean asked him to do. We decided to put him in for a few more days when the initial two weeks were up so that we could get him progressed a little farther and try to end the swim lessons on a positive note.

We are really proud of Cason. He came a long way in the last few weeks from where he started and really had to step outside of his comfort zone every swim day. He never really actually liked putting his face in but did it many times anyway. He is definitely more comfortable in the water now and hopefully next year he will do better in lessons. Here is a video of some of his last days and a few pictures for the book.

edited to say sorry for the crappy quality of the video -- an hd camera is definitely going to have to be on my Christmas wish list!



Not every kid gets swim lessons with a retriever.



Picking up dive sticks (or coins or rings, I'm not really sure).