We’re Made of Dirt?
We had a huge breakthrough today with my daughter, TQ.
Let me give you a little backstory…
A few years ago, when TQ was three, another child pushed her into a swimming pool. Unable to swim yet, she sank like a stone in the shallow end. I thank God I was in the water and was able to scoop her right up. Physically, she was unharmed. I cannot, however, say the same about her poor little psyche.
The incident caused her to develop an intense fear of any water too deep to stand in, which at age three was everyplace except the bathtub. The summer before she turned four, my father insisted I take her to swim lessons and offered to pay for the best individual classes that money could buy. I signed her up and every morning for three months I took her to swim lessons. Though terrified at first, the teacher was excellent and was able to quell her fears and she learned to swim beautifully. My father was thrilled when I called to tell him of her progress. Sadly, he died unexpectedly three days later and was never able to see TQ swim fearlessly and with total confidence.
I considered those swim lessons to be my dad’s goodbye gift to my daughter; something that she would have for a lifetime.
Summer ended and all through the fall we swam in the very pool in which she was pushed into the year before. She dove into the deep end over and over and I was incredibly proud of how far she had come.
Unfortunately, after the winter, on the first warm day of spring, we met some friends at the community pool and TQ was not interested in going in the deeper water. She clung to me as she did after the “incident.” I figured it was a phase and would pass. For the whole year she refused to swim and would dig her nails into my neck hanging on for dear life. Her father and I began to lose patience. We knew she still had the skills and could not fathom why she wouldn’t use them. It seemed so illogical. We could understand her fear if she DIDN’T know how to swim but she did.
Pool party after pool party (we go to a LOT of celebratory pool parties in Florida) I would often be the only adult in the pool, either holding her or watching close by, at her behest, while she used a flotation device. She seemed not to care that all her peers swam unassisted. She didn’t care that she would miss out on swimming in the big pool with her cousins at our annual beach vacation. Her fear overrode everything else and defied anything resembling logic. We were clearly dealing with a full blown phobia.
So another summer, fall and winter passed and it is now spring of 2006. We have gone to the pool once and attended one pool party with no change at all. My husband and I had conceded that getting irritated or chiding her or bribing her or any of the 46 different approaches we’d tried were not going to work. This was a job for the professionals.
So we went to the pool today with no delusions about her swimming. In fact, my husband announced quite clearly that he had no intentions of practicing swimming with her and I concurred. I asked her once if she wanted to try and she said no and I said fine. I started to remind her that she would miss out on a lot of fun this summer but I decided to leave it alone.
So when she said “Mom, I’m going to swim to you”, I thought I must be hallucinating. But there she was, wiggling through the water like a fish. And she did it over and over until she was exhausted. I know we still have a long road ahead of us, like swimming in the deep end, but this is more progress than we’ve had in well over a year and I couldn’t be happier.
I know Poppy is proud of her, too.
˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚
My stepmom sent me this. It’s pretty funny and those of you with children old enough to talk will totally relate because if your kids are anything like mine, they probably say some crazy sh!t.
(If the use of the word God bothers you, insert the name of your preferred divine creator or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster and it will read more or less the same)
The following are answers given by elementary school age children to the following questions:
Why did God make mothers?
1. She’s the only one who knows where the scotch tape is.
2. To clean the house.
3. To help us out of there when we were getting born.
How did God make mothers?
1. He used dirt, just like for the rest of us.
2. Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring.
3. God made my Mom just the same like he made me. He just used bigger parts.
What ingredients are mothers made of?
1. God makes mothers out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice in the world and one dab of mean.
2. They had to get their start from men’s bones, then they mostly use string, I think.
Why did God give you your mother and not some other Mom?
1. We’re related.
2. God knew she likes me a lot more than other people’s moms like me.
What kind of little girl was your Mom?
1. My Mom has always been my Mom and none of that other stuff.
2. I don’t know because I wasn’t there, but I bet she was pretty bossy.
3. They say she used to be nice.
What did Mom need to know about dad before she married him?
1. His last name.
2. She had to know his background. Like is he a crook? Does he get drunk on beer?
3. Does he make at least $100 a month? Did he say NO to drugs and YES to chores?
Why did your Mom marry your dad?
1. My dad makes the best spaghetti in the world. And my Mom eats a lot.
2. She got too old to do anything else with him.
3. My grandma says that Mom didn’t have her thinking cap on.
Who’s the boss at your house?
1. Mom doesn’t want to be boss, but she has to because dad’s such a goofball.
2. Mom. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.
3. I guess Mom is, but only because she has a lot more stuff to do than dad.
What’s the difference between moms and dads?
1. Moms work at work & work at home, & dads just go to work at work.
2. Moms know how to talk to teachers
3. Dads are taller & stronger, but moms are the boss cause that’s who you got to ask if you want to sleep over at your friend’s.
4. Moms have magic, they make you feel better without medicine.
What does your Mom do in her spare time?
1. Mothers don’t get spare time.
2. She pays bills all day long.
What would it take to make your Mom perfect?
1. On the inside she’s already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.
2. A diet. You know, her hair. I’d diet, maybe blue.
If you could change one thing about your Mom, what would it be?
1. She has this weird thing about me keeping my room clean. I’d get rid of that.
2. I’d make my Mom smarter. Then she would know it was my sister who did it and not me.
3. I would like for her to get rid of those invisible eyes on her back.
˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚
That one about knowing where the scotch tape is? Totally true in this family. I have to hide it from my daughter because left to her own devices, she uses about a roll of tape a week. I also seem to be the only one who knows where the scissors, thermometer and lightbulbs are.
And for a while, I totally had my daughter convinced that I have eyes in the back of my head…lol
The sweetest one I ever heard (maybe I am a little biased though) was when they asked my son how he got to be a twin. He answered that he and his sister both chose me to be their mom when they were in heaven, so God said ok and let mommy have two babies in my tummy. Isn’t that just the sweetest thing ever? I try really hard to keep that in my head all the time because that particular child is my most difficult/challenging one, and the sweetness of that one statement still calms me down when I am so mad I think smoke will start coming out of my ears.
totally hilarious, totally!
That is so cute! I remember when my youngest was in Junior Kindergarten and they made Mother’s Day Cards. Each card had questions that the child had to put in an answer for. I don’t remember what all it said, but I do remember that it said that I was 14 years old and I liked to climb trees! I still chuckle about that…
It was the damn thinking cap I forgot. That is how I got here…
Great stuff. I like the mom was made out of everything nice…with just a little dab of mean.
Thats great. My son and I read through those and laughed
You can’t go wrong with a Dad who says NO to drugs and YES to chores! Well, maybe he can say YES to taking the pot once in a while….(grin)
That was the sweetest story! I spent most of my time reading this post saying “Go TQ! You can do it! Swim, baby, swim!!”
But let me backtrack a bit… Someone pushed her into the pool?! At 3 years old? WTF?! Poor kid. I’m really, sincerely glad that she overcame her fear. You know her grandfather is smiling.
That’s hilarious. I especially like the “they say she used to be nice” comment. LOL!
And how awesome that your daughter is still working to overcome her fears of water. I can’t believe the kid that pushed her in is still alive after doing something like that, but I’m proud of her for continuing to face her fears.
LOL’ing about the scotch tape. My youngest is exactly the same way. He thinks anything can be accomplished with enough tape. Do you ever watch Edd, Ed and Eddy? There’s an episode wehre he says, out of nowhere…”TAPE!” We all just cracked up.
I’m proud of your daughter. My mother is intensely afraid of water and has never gotten over it. It’s a powerful fear. She must be very brave.
So funny, kids really do say the darndest things. Good news about the swimming, too. I am TERRIFIED of a pool incident like you had. So much so that I have major anxiety about a pool party we are attending tomorrow. When I go to sleep at night, I have terrible dreams of my little girl drowning. I know, it’s morbid but it really scares me. Glad your little girl seems to be getting over her fear!
“4. Moms have magic, they make you feel better without medicine.”
Awwwwwwwwww!
The others are HILARIOUS, lol!
And your daughter swimming…it will come. It sounds as if her Poppy will keep making sure of that. :-)
one of the boys has some anxiety issues. and they present themselves at different times. i have a VERY hard time with it, because it’s just so irrational. and i try to be empathetic, but rational is something i just don’t understand not having. anyway, aside from that issue, i love the answers to the questions - glad to know i’m not the only one who is in charge of EVERYTHING!!!!!
That is so awesome that she chose to swim on her own! How old is she now? I am the one with phobias, not my son lol. He says he doesn’t like sleeping with the lights off at my moms but here he insists on having them all shut off. I think it may be because my niece just started going there too. So you live in Florida! That must be nice. And all those kid quotes are so cool.
This is such a great story and a wonderful lesson. For every mom who freaks about getting that binky out of the kids’ mouth, or getting the baby out of the bed or getting them in the deep end of the pool–when they’re ready it will happen. You can only do so much. Yay for her!
Yeah! Congratulations on the breakthrough!
Glad to hear she’s swimming. I imagine it had to be frustrating, but it sounds like you gave her what she needed (time, space…) and all is well.
That was like a blog buffet, Izzy. Lots of wonderful things said, all in one place!
Hi Izzy,
The same thing happened to me at about the same age. My cousin pushed me into the pool when I couldn’t swim, I sank, my auntie rescued me quickly. As a child I still loved the water but never learned to swim until high school.
Once I started swimming, I swam a lot - a mile a day for years and years. But this is the crazy thing - I was still terrified of deep water. Every single day I went in the pool (and I went every day) I had to do a lap with the kickboard and my face out of the water, feeling like I was going to drown. Then a lap with the kickboard, face in the water, lifting up for frequent breaths. Then a lap just glancing down at the bottom occasionally…once I was over that, I would swim for 45 minutes straight. I was in my late 30s the last time I did this.
And I still have dreams about scary dark swimming pools…the rational mind may know better, but the subconscious is huge and deep and does not forget.
In my house, it’s not just scotch tape that it takes a female to find. It’s pretty much everything.
I’m so proud of TQ! Way to go, girl!
Julia is terrified of the pool. I was nodding my head while I was reading about the trouble you’ve had with TQ in the past — I could substitute TQ’s name with Julia’s and have the same post. When Julia was just over 1 she slipped in the bathtub and cracked her lip on the side of the tub. She cut her inner lip quite badly and it bled for a long time — there was a lot of blood. Since then, she’s never been quite the same.
She’s a timid kid to begin with but this accident just blew her fear of water wide open. We tried her in a swim class at the Y this spring and it went horribly. We’re going to see if, after she turns 3, she does better in a class that’s not parent-assisted, and if that doesn’t work, we’re going to pay for private lessons for her.
Anyway. Sorry for this long, rambly comment. I’m just really proud of TQ.
that’s pretty funny - and some of those kids are way observant…
And about the water - I’m glad to hear that. It’s so important! And good for you for trying to figure out the right approach to helping her. Maybe sitting back a bit was all it took. I hope so! I was never comfortable in water, so pumpkinpie has been going to swim lessons since about 6 months with her dad, who took all his lifeguard qualifications and is totally comfy in the water. It’s a nice thing for them to do together on the weekend, too.
Yay for the swimming break through! Those small victories are so awesome. My son was terrified of the water for the longest time because of a similar incident and he is just now doing swimming lessons without coersion.
I loved that list .. my favourite was: “God knew she likes me a lot more than other people’s moms like me.”
Very funny. I have to admit, I gave up control of the scotch tape a long time ago. Girlie is in control of the dispenser and it sits like a trophy on her little white table. I do, however, make her use her own freakin’ fingernails to remove umpteen strips of tape from the furniture, the windows, the walls, etc.
This weekend has been in the 90s and we’ve been at the pool. My 4 and 5 year olds have ALWAYS been timid in the water. This was the first time they really watched their friends and tried to put their heads under and lift their feet up. I feel your “proudness”.
I’ve got a kiddo terrified of the water too. So I’m really happy for you all and your daughter for her breakthrough! Yeay!
Yay, TQ! I’m still terrified of the water after a similar incident when I was a kid and I never felt comfortable in a pool after that. Glad TQ was able to fight through the fear!
Aw, she just had to get back into it on her own terms I suppose. Cute. I’m happy for her, and for you.
Kudos to your little one for conquoring her fear of the water! My children were the same way, minus a traumatic incident. They were just afraid…swimming lessons, water exposure, none of it worked. One day, they just “got it” and they never looked back.
Scotch tape is a coveted item in this house too. That and the scissors, when I need them I can never find them.
That is really cool about your daughter swimming, good for her! I love to see kids overcome their fears, it shows their strength.
What is it with scotch tape and girls. I hide it too, because it is worth it’s weight in gold and I am sick of wrapping presents with duct tape.
You should see the looks I have gotten. You would think people would find it charming or crafty….
Wonderful on TQ and the swimming!!!
Ok, my fav. is “Mom married Dad because she got too old to do anything else with him.”
THAT IS GREAT!
Ahhhhhhhh!!! Congrats to TQ. That is fabulous.
My dad is “Poppy” too. And I didn’t realize that you’d lost both parents. I’m sorry.
Good for TQ. My Mimi has water issues too — I am hoping this year we can make a little more progress. Her sister we figure will have no fear, since she’s fearless with just about everything else! ;-)