My little non-participator

Marcus is a very cautious little boy, when he gets started at a new things it takes him a while to warm up and that can make things extremely difficult.  I have never been like that in my life (and my parents verified this) and at times I struggle to do the right thing and not force him into action.  I work hard to respect his wishes while still working hard to make sure that he is moving towards participating.

This is something we also see at daycare, there are some things he just refuses to participate in (yoga, karate) and other items where he participates some days and takes other days off (music is an example of this one).  This behavior kind of worries me and I will admit that I have spent some time reading website to hear how common it is and how out parents deal with it.  I am happy to say I am not alone and it appears the most common way kids get out of this behavior it by growing up.  So I guess I need to be patient.

Swimming lessons have been falling right into this but unlike Karate and Yoga they really matter.  We love to spend a lot of time at the lake in the summer and I want to make sure Marcus is a swimmer.  This is extremely important to me, partially because I remember when my uncle Mark drowned as a adult, he had never learned to swim.  The first week of swimming lessons went OK but things really went down hill from there and last week Marcus and I just ended up sitting on the side of the pool watching the other kids take the swimming lesson.  This week I had a plan to at least get him in the water.

First, we got to the pool super early (like 20 minutes), this gave him enough time to warm up to the idea of the water.  He actually walked around the children's area for about 5 minutes before getting his feet wet. After his he got in I could tell he was getting really comfortable.  We talked about the swimming lesson that was coming and agreed that he only had to do what made him comfortable.  If he didn't like something he could sit and watch, as long as he was in the water.  Woo.... I was feeling pretty good now.  Last week was really hard and I felt totally discouraged so tonight was much better.

 Eventually it was time to for the swimming lesson to start and we walked over and Marcus got right in!  Success!

 Things did go downhill a bit when the teacher brought out the swimming arm things and Marcus really doesn't like those.  We did get him to hold it but he was not even willing to consider trying it on.  The funny part was that Marcus kept moving it a little bit further away from himself- every couple of minutes.  He just wanted to make sure we were going to make him use it (which we didn't), maybe next week.

 He did sit nicely while the only kids swam around in their life jackets.  But at the end of lessons the teach asked Marcus if he wanted to jump in the with the rest of the class.

And he said yes!

 After all of this I call tonight a success.  We still have plenty to work on but it was good.  After we were done I left him play in the children's pool for about 10 more minutes and he loved it.

There were a few more steps I did in prep for tonight.  First we have talked about his swimming lessons since last week.  That helps him mentally prepare for the swimming lesson.  The other thing I did was bribery- sometimes a mom just has to do what a mom has to do. Before we went to swimming lessons tonight Marcus and I stopped by Trader Joe's and I let him pick whatever he wanted as a post swimming lessons treat.  The bribe was that he only got them if he did good at swimming lessons.  As soon as we finished tonight Marcus asked if he was good and got his treat, and I said yes.  He was super excited.