School Swimming Lessons

This term Ethan’s class have been able to take swimming lessons. Knowing that taking his class swimming would be a big task I volunteered to help. This has given me a lovely opportunity to see how Ethan is getting on with his swimming as Darren is the one that takes him to his swimming club each week.

Darren has been having concerns about how Ethan has been getting on at the swimming club as they had changed their method of teaching him over the past few months. Darren felt that Ethan wasn’t progressing in any way.

This first swimming lesson I had with Ethan showed me that he had actually lost his confidence in the deep water. He clung to me and wouldn’t let me go even though he asked to go in the big pool. In those thirty minutes I was able to get Ethan swimming again on his own. He had on his swim fin and also holding a float for support. Ethan still wanted me close to him in the water but I’m glad I was able to turn his nervousness around in that short time.

This week Ethan took his swimming to a different level and I’m so proud of my little boy. The lesson started with a very eager little boy swimming on his own with his swim fin. He didn’t want me in arms reach and I was able to swim in-front of him encouraging him to go forwards in the right direction.

For some reason we swapped Ethan’s swim fin support for a woggle and that change of support got him moving in the water even more. I also had to encourage him to blow bubbles in the water as he swam to try to lift his body up as he swims with his legs downwards rather than behind him.

The swimming instructor wanted to push Ethan even more and as Ethan was holding on to the edge of the pool she removed his woggle and made me step out of arms reach. She then made Ethan swim towards me without any float support, and he did. I couldn’t believe it!

We then made him swim back to the edge of the pool. I spent a few minutes making Ethan go back and forth like this between me and the wall. I moved back a little further each time, and every time Ethan was swimming on his own. I made sure I gave him the right support when I can see it was getting too much for him.

We also worked on jumping in the pool, something that Ethan isn’t really sure of. He needed lots of encouragement and support to jump into the swimming pool to me but suddenly he started to enjoy it. In those last few minutes of the lesson Ethan was happily jumping into the pool to me and then swimming back to the side, unsupported, to get back out and jump in again.

We are going to take Ethan swimming together to see if he will continue to swim on his own between us. If he does we will be reporting this new development to his swimming club and really hope that they can build on it. It would be amazing if Ethan was able to swim without any support in the water.