Disappointment in the pool

In my life before becoming a mommy, I was very active in the swimming world. When we moved back to my hometown, I taught swim lessons 3 days a week and coached swim team 5-7 days a week from November 2005-August 2008. There are some days I miss it; but right now, I'm not willing to give up my time with Tate. I am able to keep up with some of what is going on in the sport since my dad is the assistant coach for the high school team. I also still teach a private lesson once a week to get my chlorine fix!
Eventually, I would love to get back into coaching and it would be awesome to be able to share with them. When I was in high school, it ended up becoming a family sport for us. All 3 of us kids swam competitively and so did my dad. He was also a judge and my mom was in charge of taking splits for us. I won't force my children into competitive swimming, but they will have to take lessons. Then I secretly hope that they will love it as much as I do! 

So far, Tate loves the water: bath, shower, pool, garden hose or puddles. This is his second summer taking swimming lessons and am a very disappointed. Last summer, we had one of my former swimmers as our parent-child instructor. Both Tate and I enjoyed it so much, we took 2 sessions. Becca sang songs with us to introduce skills and keep it fun. He was only 10-11 months during that time, so I mainly wanted to make sure he was comfortable in the water since a pool is a little different than bath time.

When I signed Tate up this summer, I asked if Becca would be the instructor again because she did such an awesome job. I was told she wasn't; however, the instructor was just as great and we would really like her. I recognized her name from around the swimming community, but had never personally met her. I still was optimistic since the Superintendent of Aquatics and Wellness had raved about her.

After almost 2 weeks of lessons, I am not impressed. In fact, I am very disappointed. My 22 month old starts telling me he wants to "GO!" after about 10 minutes in the water because he is bored. We work on 1-2 skills per lesson and it is very self directed. The only thing we do as a group are the opening and closing songs. She comes by and dunks the kids under water, praises them and moves on to dunk the next.

We are so lucky that Tate is comfortable with water in his face, but it scares some kids to death. I have 2 nephews that absolutely do not like water in their faces at all. It really bothers me that there is a baby in the class and they dunk him without blowing in his face first! I know they lose the reflex to hold their breath when you blow in their face around 6 months, but the poor thing comes up coughing, gagging and crying. Judging by that reaction, it wouldn't hurt to see if he would hold his breath before he was dunked under.

Next summer, we will have two in the class. If she is the instructor again, we will not be taking swimming lessons through the Red Cross. I plan on putting that on the evaluation form because they need to know. Tate will almost be old enough to take lessons in the preschool class at the YMCA. I preferred teaching the preschool class when I taught, so maybe I could start teaching again. We will just have to see what happens.