Taking the Plunge

Our son missed his swim lesson earlier in the week due to our visit with Kai’s grandparents, so he had a make-up session over the weekend. His instructor had us bring him to the house of one of his other students as they have a swimming pool.

When I later went to pick him up, Kai and the other boy were happily doing laps. They were enjoying swimming, as well as each other’s company.

The instructor, James, asked if I was in a hurry to take Kai home. He said that if we had time, he wanted Kai to try jumping off the diving board for the first time. I told him that I would love to see that.

Kai overheard us, and immediately was anxious.

“I don’t want to go on the diving board!”

“Dad, take me home now!”

I stepped back and let James handle this.

He instructed Kai to swim another lap, and then had him watch the other boy do it first. He said that Lee was scared the first time, too, but now he loves it.

Lee went off the board with no hesitation. And then it was Kai’s turn.

He was really scared.

James told him that he could first jump in from the edge of the pool. Kai is used to doing that at the place where he has his regular lessons, but this pool was eight feet deep compared to only five feet at his usual one.

After much hesitation, and a lot of instruction and encouragement from James, Kai jumped in. James pointed out how he floated back up.

Now it was time to go off the board.

It was not a high board. It was only about a foot off the ground. But I can understand how the thought of walking the plank would make Kai nervous the first time.

Kai stepped up on the board, but said he was scared. James came over and held his arm out for Kai to hold on to as he walked further out on the board. Kai was very tentative. But he slowly walked out, while holding on to James’ arm.

And then he jumped in.

He quickly surfaced and swam to the other end. Lee went over to give him a high five.

Kai had a huge smile on his face and asked how many more he could do.

He walked over to the board and did not hesitate as he leaped out over the water.

And then he did it a third time, this time with James nowhere near the board. And after that, he wanted to do it again, but it was getting late, so we had to force him to leave.

One day, Kai will dive head first into the water. But on this day that was not the objective.

My son had conquered another fear, with much help from James. And that was something to see.

Swimmingly Good, and Some Adversity, Too

After two days of summer school, my son is off to good start adjusting to being in a new classroom and having a new teacher. He has been safe both days, and his teacher reported that he has been happy and doing a nice job. It probably helped that she let the students pick something out of her prize box on the first day and Kai found a couple of Pokémon cards.

Of course, life with Kai usually means that even when things are going well in one area, there are often complications in other areas.

Yesterday, Kai came home from school in a good mood. After greeting him, I went back to my home office feeling happy that he had had another good day.

But about a half hour later, when it was time for him to leave for his swim lesson, I heard some yelling. I came out to see what was going on.

My wife explained that Kai said he wanted a Nintendo DS. (Quick aside: I don’t know where this desire for a DS came from. I am pretty sure he has seen them before and he never was interested at all. Perhaps he is becoming more in tune with his surroundings and taking more of an interest in things that other children have.)

Anyway, my wife said she told him that perhaps he could get it for Hanukkah or Christmas. When he said he did not want to wait that long, she mentioned that he might be able to earn it if he achieved Level 4 at school.

He was not happy with that idea. When Kai wants something, he wants it RIGHT NOW. He does not like waiting even a week for something. To wait until the end of the year probably seemed like an eternity.

But one of my goals has been to try to teach him to be able to wait for things, and to work a longer period of time before getting rewarded. I believe that it is a crucial skill he needs to learn. But it is not easy to teach.

In this case, he whined and moaned and yelled that he can’t wait that long and that he wanted it now. He said that he would not go to his swim lesson.

As it was already late, I felt an urgency to get him going. We could have waited him out, tried to calm him down, and reason with him.

I used a different approach.

I put my arms around him, carried him to the garage, and put him into the car. He was screaming the whole time, saying that he didn’t want to be my dad anymore (meaning he did not want me to be his dad).

My wife said that she would not be able to get him into the gym so I got in the car with them, sitting in the back seat next to Kai. During the ride, he kept expressing mean thoughts. But his anger gradually subsided.

At the gym, I thought there was a chance that he might walk in on his own.

Alas, when he refused, I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the building. He has grown a lot so he is no longer a small child. If he really resisted, it would have been nearly impossible to get him inside. But he only put up mild resistance and I was able to get him over to his trainer James.

While I was getting Kai into the building, my wife had called James and explained the situation. When he saw us, he started to talk to Kai and gave me the signal to leave. James told me later that Kai calmed down a while after I left.

I went back toward the end of his lesson and saw that Kai is swimming better than ever.

I praised him for recovering and doing a great job with swimming. But I also told him that he had acted poorly and would not be able to play with his Pokémon cards for the rest of the day. He accepted his punishment calmly, as he realized that his actions were not appropriate.

We went on to enjoy the evening, playing yet another game of Monopoly after dinner.

And so it was a day filled with good and bad, adversity and recovery.

I don’t know what will happen the next time the topic of the Nintendo DS comes up, but that is for another time.

Instead, I will leave you with a video of Kai swimming yesterday. His form is not perfect, but he has come a long way.

25 Meters

25 meters.

That is the length of the swimming pool where my son as been taking lessons.

This week, for the first time, Kai swam the length of the pool completely on his own, without wearing a noodle, without stopping, without any help.

My wife was very excited to tell me the news when she got home from his lesson. On his first attempts, he got scared and paused along the side of the pool. But then he gained confidence and went the whole way from one end to the other. His form wasn’t perfect, she said, but he did it.

I was thrilled to hear the news, of course. But I think my wife was even more overjoyed. And that is because, months ago, she was very skeptical that Kai would ever be able to do it.

Back then, he was literally kicking and screaming not to go to his lessons. He didn’t want to get into the water, let alone try to swim. And when he did get into the water, he was very anxious. He had to have his security blanket, a foam noodle, around his body as it helped keep him afloat.

To try to overcome his resistance, my wife had promised Kai that if he ever swam the length of the pool on his own, he would get a certain very special reward (which shall not be mentioned here). I was upset when I found out about that promise. The reward was much more than I wanted to promise. But she said that I had nothing to worry about. Kai would never be able to do it, she said.

I wasn’t quite as skeptical. But I have to admit that the progress he has made has come even faster than I thought.

25 meters.

At the beginning, it could have been a mile. Now, it doesn’t seem so far.

Don’t you just love it when your kids exceed expectations?


P.S. Fortunately, Kai has not mentioned the prize, so I am hoping that he has forgotten all about it. And I don’t want anyone to remind him of it!

Progress at the Pool

It has been a while since I saw my son at his swim lesson, so I looked forward to the opportunity to see him this week.

My wife has been telling me of the progress that Kai has been making. So, I wanted to see for myself what he can do.

I was happy to see how far he has come. Kai now puts his head under water while stroking his arms, and then lifts it up to the side to breathe. It’s not the smoothest motion, but that he can do it at all is amazing. He is much farther along than we thought he would be at this point.

And the best part is that he is enjoying it. At the end of the day, I asked him what was his favorite thing that he did that day and he answered “swimming.” Given that he’s off from school this week and he did several other fun things, that said a lot. It is certainly a far cry from the first few weeks of lessons when we had to literally drag him out of school kicking and screaming on the days of his lessons, and then forcibly carry him into the health club where the pool is.

As great as seeing the swimming was, the thing that stood out for me was something else that I saw at the pool. A girl about Kai’s age was swimming near him at one point. He looked at her and asked her what her name is. After asking everyone their name at the party we went to recently, he is apparently keeping up his socialness. This time, however, after the girl told him her name, he didn’t just turn away. He said, “nice to meet you.”

Progress, progress, in more ways than one. I love it.

Drowning Fears of Swimming

I previously wrote about our son’s success with his new swimming instructor, James. Unfortunately, since then, James had to cancel twice and another time we had a long-standing doctor’s appointment for Kai. So, Kai has had only one swim lesson in the past month. Disruptions in the regular routine are hard on kids with autism, and, with these lessons still being new to Kai, the result was that his fears about swimming returned with a vengeance.

Kai started talking about being scared of swimming several days ago. By Sunday, his anxiety had increased and he spoke of Tuesday, swim day, being a bad day. On Monday, he told his teachers that he would not be coming to school the next day. That afternoon, as he was leaving school, he said, “See you on Wednesday” to everyone on his way out as he was planning to be sick the next day.

We tried to be extremely positive with him, telling him that he would be alright, have fun, and that James would take good care of him. But, his anxiety only grew stronger.

Our own anxiety had grown, too. His fears were even worse than before he started his lessons with James. How long would it take to just get him back to square one? How would he perform at school with all his anxiety about swimming?

Tuesday morning came and he did not want to go to school. It took a lot of coaxing to get him into the cab in the morning. Our fears were realized when Kai ended up having his worst day of the year at school. It was so bad that his social worker called us to find out if something was going on at home that she should know about.

I knew that it would be hard to get Kai over to the swim lesson so I volunteered to pick him up at school and drive him over to the health club. Kai smiled when he saw me at school. Perhaps, he thought, swimming would be canceled again. But, when he found out that was not the case, he ran back into his classroom. One of the teaching assistants retrieved him but Kai still refused to leave school. He kept saying that he was scared of swimming and that he would die. I tried to reassure him while his TA employed some helpful calming strategies. After much soothing on both of our parts, we walked Kai out to the car.

I drove him over to the health club where we would meet Mom. Kai did not want to get out of the car. So I playfully carried him from the car into the club and over to the locker room. He laughed the whole way, but when it came time to change into his swimsuit, he resisted again.

When I finally had him ready, I walked Kai over to James who was already in the pool. He spoke to Kai in a reassuring, steady voice. Kai kept saying that he was scared and did not want to get into the pool. James kept speaking calmly to Kai. I was surprised when, a few minutes later, Kai voluntarily went into the pool.

James reviewed the three steps of swimming with Kai: Number one, kick fast; number two, extend your arms; number three, make the “wooooo” sound to breathe properly. He got Kai to perform all three parts, first one at a time, then all together. Within ten minutes, he had Kai swimming out to the middle of the pool.

At that point, James stopped to ask Kai, “Is swimming scary or is it fun?” Kai responded that it was fun and said he wanted to do more.

During the rest of the session, James got Kai to do a lot more, including putting his head further into the water than he had done before. After Kai did that, he called over to us, “Mom, Dad, I did it!” We gave him a big cheer.

Once again, I was amazed at how much James was able to accomplish with Kai. It gives me hope about the things that Kai might be able to achieve, not just in the swimming pool, but in life.

At the end of the session, James asked Kai if Tuesdays would be a day to look forward to or a day to be scared of. Kai said that he would look forward to it.

Now that my own anxiety has been relieved, I will too.

Swim Lesson For Son Teaches Parents, Too

My son has been taking swimming lessons for about two years with very little to show for it.

Until now.

Kai is a boy who is afraid of many things, and getting his face wet and being in a pool is one of them. He did have a bit of success with his first instructor, Jody, who had some experience working with kids on the spectrum. It took awhile, but, after several months, Jody was able to get Kai to kind of, sort of swim, about eight feet, with his face in the water.

Things went downhill, though, when Jody got promoted up to management and was no longer available to teach Kai. Without Jody, Kai’s fears in the pool immediately returned. He would constantly cry, “I’m scared” and do nothing but cling to his coach or to the side of the pool. We went through a number of different instructors, but none had any experience working with kids like Kai, and it showed. After several months of this, we stopped the lessons.

A few weeks ago, my wife heard from the grandmother of one of Kai’s classmates that her grandson was taking swim lessons from a young man named James. She raved about how good he was. The name rang a bell and he turned out to be the same person who was referred to us two years before. Back then, James’ schedule was completely booked and we were disappointed that he could not work with our son. And, so, we settled for the instructors who did not turn out to be very good. Now, with nothing to lose, we tried calling James again, thinking his schedule would again be full, but this time he was able to fit Kai in.

At his first lesson with James, Kai, per usual, cried out, “I’m scared!” James gave him a floating barbell to hang on to, but did not let Kai get close enough to cling to him. Instead, he kept talking to him, calmly, patiently.

James had prepared by speaking with me extensively on the phone ahead of the lesson. He had learned that Kai was extremely motivated by numbers. And so, with Kai showing some anxiety, James gave him the three steps to becoming a good swimmer. Number one: kick. Number two: extend your arms. Number three: make the “wooo” sound which James showed how to make by “wooing” while putting his face in the water.

They practiced each step individually near the side of the pool. Then, with James holding onto the barbell, Kai tentatively moved away from the side. He kicked his way to a platform in the middle of the pool. More practice, and then, with his arms extended further and moving less tentatively, he was able to kick his way back to the side of the pool. Next, it was time to put it all together. Kai put his face under water. “Woooo!” he said as he kicked and moved along.

Now, I don’t want to make it sound like Kai did not protest through this at all. He did. But, whenever he did, James kept him from getting overly panicked. He talked to him. He joked with him. He even distracted him with multiplication problems. “What’s six times five?” “30.” “Keep kicking.” “Seven times six?” “42.” “Wooo!”

At some point, without Kai realizing it, James no longer held on to the barbell. Kai was moving completely on his own. When James pointed that out to Kai, he understood that he was going to be okay. After all the past failures, I could hardly believe it when I saw Kai moving on his own for the whole length of the pool.

With that, in just one lesson, Kai overcame his fear of the water and began swimming.

And, with that, we learned some lessons, too. Not all swim instructors are the same. When you have a child with special needs, it pays to find one who really knows how to work with kids like yours. And, we also learned that Kai is capable of learning how to swim after all.

I can’t wait to see what lesson two brings.