#didnt #daughter #needed #lessons #water
Anouk is the proud wife of Erwin and mother of four girls: Aurélie (9), Emeline (8), Vieve (6) and Lilou (3). Their lively household is sometimes chaotic, but love, laughter and spontaneous dance parties always predominate. Anouk enthusiastically shares her adventures in parenthood.
“Every parent will agree that swimming lessons are horror. With four children you also know that you will spend many years in the pool. That’s our own fault. I can still remember our eldest daughter’s first swimming lesson. She had been smooth with everything in her development. So we left for the pool in good spirits with our hopefully mini Kromowidjojo. Well, that dream quickly fell apart.
Loyalty to bad zero
First of all, I was surprised that children start at pool zero. That’s so disheartening. Bad one sounds so much more positive: then it seems as if they have already achieved something. Bath zero is nothing, just water habituation. At that time I did not yet know that my daughter needed no less than 33 lessons to get used to water. You’d think she’d never been in the shower before. She expertly avoided every drop and splash of water.
We saw one new child after another splash into the water and leave for bath one, but not our Aurélie. She remained faithful to bath zero. There I sat week after week in the oppressive heat, while I didn’t even have a nice tan.
Also read – ‘Is school swimming making a comeback?’
“My heart broke and I could have filled that pool with my tears.”
Swimming pool full of tears
Finally, 2.5 years later, the great and long-cherished moment arrived. Aurélie was allowed to swim for diploma A. However, corona then threw a spanner in the works. The parents were not allowed to watch. My heart broke and I could have filled that pool with my tears.
Emeline also floated around in bad zero for a little longer than usual, but then became a speedboat. At the same time as Aurélie, she was allowed to graduate for diploma C. With Vieve we are back to square one. She has been at it for two years and is still in the first bath.
Too cold
Vieve managed to return from the first three swimming lessons with bone-dry hair. Very handsome! No idea how she managed that, because parents are no longer allowed to watch swimming lessons since corona. On the one hand, completely ‘yippee’. Now I no longer have to sit in that sauna, where my carefully straightened hair immediately starts to curl. Those curls then also stick to my forehead. So charming! On the other hand, we no longer have a good overview of progress.
Vieve’s problem is mainly that she is too cold. After every lesson, she comes out of the pool, shivering and chattering, as if she had had a snowball fight in Siberia in her summer dress. We have already bought her several wetsuits.
Also read – ‘5 phases that every parent goes through during their child’s swimming lessons’
ABC, I’m quitting
Then it’s Lilou’s turn, who, like a real drama queen, screams for a towel if even one tiny drop of water gets into her eyes while washing her hair. Sometimes (read: always) I feel like shouting, as children do: ‘ABC, I’m not participating anymore’, but of course that ABC has to be there. In the coming years, I will go to the pool every week as Mother Goose with chicks that prefer to stay on dry land.”
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