We took L for her first swimming lessons when she was six months old. She loved it. Then through some kind of osmosis, she began taking on the fear of the kids around her, I think, and by the end of the series of lessons, she wasn’t wild about swimming.
Last summer, she still clung to her anxieties: we really didn’t go often as a result.
This summer, it’s a different girl with us in the pool.
This makes for different parents in the water, as well.
It has, in short, become a family affair. L floats; L slashes; L jumps — and we have to be there for it all. And that’s not just the parental pride; it’s L’s request.
“Hey guys!” she likes to call out, “Watch me!”
The clearest indicator of how her attitude toward the water has changed is her willingness to jump excitement about jumping.
Again, and again, and again, only occasionally losing her nerve.
Nothing deters her, not even a face full of water. Not even a face entirely under water.
All of this is both gratifying (it’s great to see her overcoming her fear) and terrifying (it’s sometimes heart-stopping to watch her overcoming her fear). During a visit last week, she was being silly at the water’s edge and fell in. I was ten to fifteen feet away, so I swam there in a matter of moments. But those moments seemed eternal as she bobbed about in the water, unable to get her head out of the water, clearly terrified.
Another object lesson in the obvious: parenting isn’t about holding tight, but it is about being close by when those tight embraces are necessary.