Here is an incredible story written by Tammi Sumsion, one of our RDI families about her experience with her son and swimming over the past few years. It is great to see the progress of her son, thanks for sharing your story with us!
I loved the water when I was younger and I still do. Our summer activities were always
geared around doing things in the water.
When I got married I found out that my husband and his family always
spent time doing water activities as well. I knew that when we had children they would be like us,
always in the water and very good at swimming. When our older son received his diagnosis we never dreamed
that being around the water would no longer be an option for us, or would
it? In my younger years I spent
many years teaching swim lessons and knew how to teach people to swim, so how
hard could this be? I knew all the
tricks, or so I thought, but what I didn’t know is that my son would be
teaching me.
When we started taking my son to the pool all he would do is
hang onto to the edge. If you
tried to get him away from the edge he would hold so tight around your neck you
couldn’t breathe. We started to
schedule regular SWIM DAYS during the week and were consistent in going on
those specific days. At first, I
didn’t ask my son to do anything in the pool except to explore on his own. We did this for several weeks, we were
in the pool doing things around him so he could see us, but we left him to
explore his surroundings.
After a
few weeks I started to have him come with me as we did things in the pool. For example, I would just walk around
with him in the pool or we would take the water ball and play catch with our
friends. During that time, I would
talk to him about what he would see, the divers on the board or the man
swimming next to us, or his brother diving for the rings. I allowed him to just observe with me away from the pool and
as I did he would start to notice things around him more often. Once we got to that point, I would then
ask him to participate in the activities we would do. If we were throwing the water ball I would make a game of it
and say, “Let’s see if we can throw the ball and hit your brother," or I would
put a diving ring on my foot and hold it just below the water (just far enough
that he would get his check wet) and ask for him to reach and take the ring off
my foot.
When he did take the ring
or throw the ball I would make a big deal about it by splashing the water or
jumping up and down, this would be enough water that would splash on his face,
but not too much that it was over bearing. The next thing we tried was to get his face in the
water. We knew his biggest hurdle
was to go underwater and to put his face in the water. I thought it might be easier for him
and less threatening if he had goggles so he could see. So we all started wearing the goggles
as we did some of the activities in the water. I let him know that he had a pair if he wanted to wear them,
but never told him he had to wear them.
At first I would just wear them and let him see me put my face in the
water with them on. We started to
play the game ring-around-the-rosy while wearing our goggles and instead of
going all the way under on “we all fall down," we would just put our faces in
the water and blow bubbles. After
several tries, he would not put on the goggles, but we were able to get him to
blow the bubbles on top of the water.
The next step to the game was to put your face in the water while
blowing the bubbles. This
step took several times to the pool to master, but he did finally get his face in
the water while blowing the bubbles.
After he was able to blow the bubbles with his face in the water, I
decided to try taking him under the water with us. We started out by holding him up under the armpits, counted
to three and we went under, but he did not. After trying this for a few days, I then held him close to me
while he held the other person’s hand with just one hand, counted to three and
then went under. This was the
start of him going under the water.
He did not like it at first and I made sure he only went under the water
once, but I would repeat the sequence with him every time we went to the pool,
bubbles, face wet, and going under water, and over time he was able to go under
with us several times. I would
like to mention that during this game of going under the water is when he
started to wear his goggles.
After
several experiences of him going under the water, I was able to let him just
hold my hand instead of me holding onto him as we went under. From ring-around-the-rosy we helped him
try to dive for rings. We would start
in the shallow end, drop the ring and hold his hand as we would guide it to the
ring. Once he could get the ring
on his own, we would take him to a deeper water. In the deeper water it was hard for him to get down to the
ring, but he started to get comfortable enough with us pushing him down to the
ring to retrieve it. I found that
once he was able to go under the water is when other things started to open up
for him, he was more comfortable going under water himself without help, he
went to the deep end to explore, and he even started to jump in on his
own.
During our pool time I always made sure he had time to explore on his own, while observing us playing in the pool and trying to introduce some activity for us to do as a group. It has been three summers and finally he is coming to me to teach him new things, like floating on his back, or his front, wanting to learn how to swim like me, or making bubble rings under water. It was him who taught me at the beginning and now I get the chance to teach him.
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