Swimming is a happy place for lil man. Water safety and survival is extremely important to us, especially since we live in the land of 10,000+ lakes.
Lil man absolutely loves water! He wants to swim in it, splash in it, play with bubbles in the water… anything that involves water.
As his mom, water terrifies me. When lil man was 2-3 years old he would bee line for any body of water he saw. He was not going to stop for anything that stood in his way. He walked off the end of a dock (life jacket on and me aware it was going to happen to scoop him out) when he was 2 1/2 years old. We thought he would learn and not do it again. Wrong!
Once we received the Autism diagnosis, we learned rather quickly that water safety was going to be a HUGE goal for us. So we pursued swimming lessons. We started with Foss Swim School, where we had heard such great things. Unfortunately, we arrived at our evaluation and the atmosphere was over stimulating and lil man could not focus on the teacher. He never made it in the pool. We had to abort and left the building with a screaming child.
We never stopped looking for another opportunity. We spoke with our clinician at our Autism Day program, other parents and therapists for recommendations. After a year we found a place worth pursuing and we were successful with a full evaluation.
Be it the additional time for lil man to continue to grow his skills or, as you can see in the picture, a more private facility, we are now having success.
Tip: Listen to your gut when you visit therapy facilities. You know your child and you know what will work best for them.
I didn’t need to experience the Foss evaluation to know what the outcome would be once I saw the set-up. I gave it a shot since we were there and lil man really wanted to get in that water. But my gut told me it was not our place.
My goal is to embrace lil man’s love of water. Right now it is MY enemy, but my goal is to make it OUR friend.
