Turning Dominic into a Duckling - week eleven
Follow the continuing story of toddler Dominic’s experiences of attending swimming lessons at his local pool, as recounted by mum Claire.
After the activities last week of ‘Dom the Bomb’ my husband and I have decided that our almost- two-year-old definitely has ideas above his station.
It’s great that he has bags of confidence way and above what he is meant to be doing for his age. Sometimes though it can get a wee bit worrying. Like when he climbs to the top of a 7ft step ladder and sings ‘king of the castle’ in cute toddler-ese whilst waving merrily at his underlings. Or when he attempts to traverse a rope bridge in the school playground (also fairly high off the ground) battling his way past energetic eight year olds to get to the other side.
...he climbs to the top of a 7ft step ladder and sings ‘king of the castle’ in cute toddler-ese whilst waving merrily at his underlings.
And maybe other mothers can help here, but how does he manage to do these things in the 5 seconds that your back is turned? And I can’t give him the excuse that he copies his elder sibling because his brother would never take such risks!
In our swimming lessons he does seem to want to copy older children. There is a class of three or four year olds after ours. (Their parents are able to sit and relax by poolside reading the paper, lucky things.)
They begin their lesson by sitting on the side of the pool and kicking madly. A neat row of paddling little feet creating the most amazing noise you can imagine! Dominic loves this. Last week when he had done enough ‘slide bombing’ for the day he got out of the pool and wanted to sit in the line with them and do the same! I felt bad having to drag him away - he wouldn’t do this in our lesson earlier. Maybe because his peers haven’t quite got the hang of it either, so it’s not as exciting.
So, this week I try and give him a similar experience by sitting next to him myself and kicking. Copying mum unfortunately does not float his boat! Other than getting him bumped up to a much higher age group I am not sure how to solve this one.
His fascination with the toddler slide at the pool has expanded into our ‘dry-side’ activities too and he now loves any kind of slide. Of course, especially the ones that are far too high! And the ones that are his size, he insists on doing back to front, climbing up the slide part instead of the steps. Or doing his ‘Dom the bomb’ and coming down head first. Boys, eh! He may give me a coronary any day soon but at least he’s giving his heart lots of exercise with all this activity. Maybe he’s been reading the ‘swim 4 life’ adverts!
We have a good lesson though, and it’s good to see his pal Luke is getting more and more confident in the water too. The teacher says some cute frog shaped floats are on order which hopefully will be easier to hold on to whilst kicking across the pool. Something to look forward to!
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