A Swimming Update – Small Steps Amazing Achievements

It has been nearly a year since Ethan moved up to the next stage swimming class. I feel that we had to take a bit of a step backwards in these lessons as Ethan had learnt to swim (move in the water) using a woggle but he got lazy and stopped moving so I put him back on the armbands. This wasn’t something that I was totally happy with but I also knew in the back of my mind the next class Ethan will move up to, if possible, will be a class without me helping him. A very scary prospect as he does need so much support. I decided that I would find the next class a lot less stressful if he has armbands in place as he would easily slip off of the woggle.

Ethan is normally quite happy in these lessons doing his own floating swimming, this means I’m normally pushing him around the pool trying to catch up with the others. This doesn’t bother me as our swimming lessons are more about Ethan having fun in the water and giving us some bonding time. 

The lesson before the half term break I noticed that when we were in the deeper water Ethan had become fascinated with a submerged ledge and he swam towards it all on his own. Ethan had used his legs to move himself through the water without any help from me. It wasn’t a great distance but he swam up to the ledge, stood on it and then jumped back in the water. He then repeated this process before it was time for the lesson the end.

Last week I told our swimming teacher how the ledge had motivated Ethan to swim, so she told us to stay in that area and I moved Ethan a little further away from the ledge every time he jumped back into the water. Ethan was moving forward in the water on his own, he also whooshed from the ledge into the teacher arms and back again.

The lesson always ends with the children doing rockets at the edge of the pool, and then the children get to go down the big slide. Ethan knew that the slide part of the lesson was coming as the teacher sat at the top of the slide.

Ethan swam from his motivating ledge all the way over to the teacher without me helping him, we did have a little choking incident but that didn’t stop him. He swam over ten meters to get to that slide for his turn. I couldn’t believe it.

I’m really looking forward to this weeks lesson to see if Ethan is still swimming on his own.

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