Swimming Lesson

Both Mandy and Dallin are pretty scared of the water.  We have been trying and trying unsuccessfully for the last couple of years to get them more used to it and to try to learn to swim.  So this year, we decided to enroll them in swimming lessons at the YMCA.

 

Convincing them to even jump to the the teachers was quite the task.  Look how Mandy is holding her arms back in a defensive position, totally unwilling to reach out to the teacher.

 

In this one though, she is actually semi-smiling.  So I think she is starting to trust her teacher a little more.

 

Dallin on the other hand has an absolute look of terror on his face.

 

Here, the teacher pretty much had to force him to put his face in the water to blow bubbles with his mouth.

I really got to hand it to those girls.  They absolutely knew how to work my kids to make them to those simple little swimming exercises.  During this last week, they have really made a lot of progress.  Mandy leaves the lesson each day rhapsodizing about how much she LOVES her teachers.  Dallin has been much more trepidatious about it.  He has come up with excuses almost everyday last week for not to go.  One day he had a stomach ache, the next day he was too tired, the next day he thought we just needed to stay home that day.  This morning though, he is actually excited to be going, which is a huge step forward for him because he knows that there are lots of dunking underwater coming and he is still excited to go.  I think some of the success of the program is having seven other little kids doing it too.  Ah peer pressure.  One of the few times that I think that I am actually GLAD that Dallin is giving into it :)