Having said that, I must admit I'm horrible at putting those beliefs into practice. For instance, we have been trying to teach Evelyn how to swim for years, but last summer especially, we really focused on it. It wasn't super successful, because when we want her to learn something is when she decides to cling terrified to our necks. This year, we have been continuing to work on it, but without the same emphasis. She had sort of got to the place she had left off last year, which meant she could swim about 5 strokes before having to stop and breathe. If she couldn't reach the bottom or cling to someone, she would just take her breath underwater.
So you can see why on the Fourth of July I almost ripped the clubhouse door off it's hinges trying to reach my little girl who was drowning! At least, I thought she was...We were having a family party at the clubhouse, and all the cousins were swimming together. Evelyn had her swim noodle, and we also had an adult or three supervising. But, just the same, I kept peeking out the window to see how she was doing. You can imagine how I felt when I saw her climb out of the pool with her noodle, walk to the deep part and chuck her swim noodle in. Then she plugged her nose and jumped in after it. The only problem was her splash pushed her noodle farther away. She swam after it, but her strokes continued to push her noodle across the pool. Her swimming was a little frantic and spasmodic, and I thought any second she would go under, but she just kept swimming, ...and swimming...and swimming. She ended up swimming across the whole pool! She was so proud of herself she did it about 100 more times.
I was proud too, but it didn't stop me from going outside and preparing to jump in should anything go wrong. She did fine.
Of course whenever we go swimming now she does the same thing, only she wants nothing to do with her swim noodle, and I keep finding myself ordering her to take it with her, just in case! Am I being too over-protective?
