Swimming with Jack

Jack's swimming class wasn't held this week, so I took him swimming at the YMCA. As we changed and walked to the pool, I told Jack, OK, we're going to do your class. You pretend that I'm the teacher, and you're the student, and you tell me what you normally do. He was good with that.

I got in the water and swum about 10-15 feet out. What happens first, I said. "Well, first the teacher says hi to us, and asks how we're doing." Hi Jack. "Hi!" How are you doing? "I'm good. OK, then we usually jump in the water and swim out to the teacher." He jumped in with a big splash and swam out to me. I need to stress again, the last time we did this, probably a month or six weeks ago, he wasn't at all comfortable in water over his head. But here we were in 4-5 feet of water, and he was happily splashing his way out to me, dog paddling, treading water, somewhat clumsily swimming, but completely at ease.

He reached me, I caught him as his teacher normally did, and threw him back in the direction of the edge. He swam back to the edge. "OK," he said, "and we do that a second time." So he did that once more.

When he got back to the edge he said, "Then we have free play." So he sort of splashed along at the edge a little, played with this little toy action figure we'd found near the pool, grabbed onto the rope separating the lanes. Then he said, "OK! Now we do some back floats." He came out to me and just flopped over onto his back. It occurred to me he should eat more.

"Then we swim another lap, from the edge to the teacher to the railing -- we'll use the railing because there are usually two teachers -- and back to the edge. And then, after that, we tread water for 15 seconds. So let me do that." OK, I said. He did his lap, and then he came to tread water. I counted out loud. After 10 seconds he seemed to be laboring. At 12, I was a little worried, and at 13 I grabbed him. He said, "That was good, we actually tread water for THIRTEEN seconds, so you were right to stop me." No problem, Jack.

We tossed a little ball around, and the action figure, for a while after that, then got out -- freezing cold -- and wrapped up in towels. Then it was back to the locker room, to shower, towel off, and go get Kate. Next week Jack will be back in his class again, and I'll be over at the side watching. But I think it will feel a little more like I'm in there with him.