The neighborhood pool opened this weekend and with it, our campaign to get A.J. to give swimming a chance. He likes the pool, likes hanging out there, but he doesn’t swim so much as he lounges by poolside, watching his friends do their daring-verging-on-reckless cannonballs and dives into the deep end.
Since I want him to feel more comfortable in the water (which is to say, not so much on the verge of utter panic), and we’re not quite sure what to try next (the swim lessons and the peer pressure have had little effect), I did what any anxious parent would do. I threw some money at the problem. I bought A.J. a pair of swim fins, goggles and snorkel. They were waiting for him when he got home from kindergarten this afternoon, and he was so happy to see them that he insisted on trying on the whole kit right then and there. He spent part of the afternoon walking around the house in his new frogman look. He reminded me a little of Dustin Hoffman at the beginning of “The Graduate.” We now know he likes wearing them around the house; we still have to see if he’ll try them at the pool.
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I am jealous of your pool. Welcome back to blogging!
ReplyDeleteAs a non-parent, I know my thoughts are baselase, but I was wondering if you could pretend for a while not to think about the pool and see what happens?
Cranky, thanks for the welcome-back. You may be a non-parent, but your advice is on target, I think. When it comes to getting the boy to try something, we've found that sometimes we have to give him a little nudge, and sometimes we have to back off. I think we're leaving the nudging phase and entering a backing-off phase.
ReplyDeleteWhen I put it like that, I think I sound almost reasonable.