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Swim lessons an exercise in patience

Last weekend, our children started up new swimming lessons. My husband and I were particularly excited because this was the year that neither one of us had to go in the pool with a child.
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Last weekend, our children started up new swimming lessons.

My husband and I were particularly excited because this was the year that neither one of us had to go in the pool with a child.

With our youngest turning three a few months ago, they are both old enough to have a swim lesson with the instructor by themselves.Our babies are growing up, I thought, misty-eyed and nostalgic.

Our son has been in swim lessons for a few years and is becoming much braver in the water and our daughter has only been in a mommy-and-me class wherein we happen to be in the same class with three members of my high school volleyball team.We only needed two more women and we could have fielded a team, right in the pool with our six-month old children.

The bizarre coincidence of living in a small town is that you can go years without running into anyone that you went to high school with and then you happen to meet up with three of them, all who have children the same age, yet you are the only one wearing an ill-fitting mom-ish bathing suit.

In our daughter's first swim class, she was amazing and brave and completely fearless.

When we go to the pool as a family and swim, our daughter is always the most challenging in the water because she honestly believes that she can swim and therefore she wants no help from her parents in the water to avoid drowning.

It was a relief when we could put her into proper swim lessons.Because of her fearlessness in the water, we were not expecting any problems with her first lesson alone.

The first thing that an instructor of six little toddlers does is to bring the gaggle of them to the shower and immediately dowse them in cold water. Shocked and appalled with the realization that neither her mom or her dad would be in the pool with her and coupled with the frigid water from the showers at the Four Seasons combined to make an incredibly angry three-year old.

Being that our daughter was screaming at the top of her lungs and kicking out at the instructor who would attempt to coax her into the water, we did as any parent would in this situation - tried to pretend that the screaming child wasn't ours.

Challenging at the best times, this strategy immediately fails when the child in questions points at you and screams: "Momma! I need you!"

Anonymity dashed, we consulted with the swim instructor who assured us that the best thing that we could do was to leave her, with her furious scowling face, to become acclimatized in the pool with her well-behaved peers. Meanwhile, her brother and her cousin were happily swimming beside her in the next group, being brave and listening to their instructor.

Twenty-five minutes into a thirty-minute lesson, the swim instructor had managed to get our little sweetie into the pool and smiles and laughter ensued for the remaining five minutes. As we were leaving to go into the change room, I asked her how she liked her lesson.

Very sincerely, she looked up at me and said, "I loved that."