Diving board drama is real life

My son has been taking preschool swimming lessons for about 10 months now. We started in January, and he has had weekly lessons ever since.

His listening skills at times drive his teachers off the diving board, but as he is in a class with various other 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds. I like to think that it’s not my son’s fault. Well, not only his fault.

My little boy did very well at the beginning of lessons. He always adored the water, and he went to many mommy and tot swim sessions with me as an infant. He whizzed (OK, maybe that’s a poor verb to use in conjunction with a pool story) through the first several levels of his classes. He received a report card for each session he completed.

If a child cannot master all the skills listed in a particular session, he or she stays at that level until ready to move on. For awhile, my boy was doing great, somewhat to my surprise. His report card saw him go from levels 1A to 1B to 2A and then he hit 2B. My son’s report card now reads “1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 2B, 2B, 2B, 2B, 2B, 2B” — or not 2B, that’s the question.

Seriously, my son has been in 2B for quite some time now. He still adores swimming, adores the pool and loves to splash, but his listening skills have not improved greatly. And to pass on to Level 3, children definitely need to be able to listen. So, my son is in 2B and is quite comfortable there, which is why I am in no hurry to see him move up.

He still loves the water, which to me is the most important aspect. Only secondary is the fact that swimming in the pool exhausts him and causes him to take extremely long naps in the afternoon. Like I said, that’s just a perk and has no bearing on the fact that mommy absolutely, positively adores how much she can accomplish during his naps on days he has swim lessons.

At the level my son is currently at (and appears destined to remain at until he starts college), many of the children in his class have expressed an interest in jumping off the diving board. To these children, jumping off the diving board is the highlight of their pool experience and they eagerly beg throughout their lessons to be allowed to do so.

All but my son.

My 3-year-old can leap off the side of the pool with great abandon, splash about with the best of them and would rather be under the water than on top of it. But he won’t go near the diving board.

It’s rather funny to watch at this point. At the end of most sessions, the teacher will line the children up from the shallow end of the pool and they will all walk to the deep end to jump off the board into their teacher’s arms.

The class usually has about six children in it, and it’s quite amusing to watch them all waddle eagerly after their teacher like so many ducklings towards to the deep end. My son is typically at the end of the line, and about the time the group gets halfway to the diving board, he realizes where they are going. It’s at that point that, without breaking stride, he pivots around and calmly walks back to the shallow end, all without slowing down a bit.

He then waits for his class to return. Once, he even waited patiently. I think he was tired that day.

I’d promised him earlier this summer we would go to a local pizza lunch buffet once he garnered enough courage to jump off the board as a celebration. He considers said buffet to be the equivalent of five-star dining and knows a good bribe when he hears one.

However, as I saw him confidently tell his teacher Thursday afternoon that he wanted to jump off the diving board, I was taken aback.

Watching him walk with confidence over to the board with his class surprised me because he never looked back once. Even as I watched him, I still didn’t think he would go through with it.

I know how much courage it takes anyone to master their fears, and I didn’t expect his to be mastered that quickly. I thought for sure he would back down at the last minute, and I didn’t want to encourage him in his attempt to jump because I wanted this to be something he did when he was ready, not when I was.

Yet he calmly walked down the plank holding onto his swimming teacher’s hand and looked at me once. He gave his eager little boy grin and then they leaped into the water together. He never looked back, but splashed into the water laughing and giggling and I realized that I could learn a lesson from this.

I realized that things need to happen on their own time and in their own place. If I force myself to do something before I am ready for it, resentment will probably set in. Confidence in my own abilities is probably the best gift I can ever give myself. I’ve done so much I would not have thought possible to do on my own with my husband gone, and as much as I will love to have him back as soon as possible, I am now confident in my own ability to be a good mother by myself and a loving wife, even across thousands of miles.

All this went through my head as I watched my little man swim with his teacher’s help to the side of the pool. As he beamed up at me, such deep thoughts were running through my head as I realized that I, too, have managed to leap successfully off my own diving board.

He looked at me and announced what had really been going on in his mind.

“Mommy! I want to go to Pizza Hut!”

The buffet was delicious that day.

Tiffany Horvath is the mother of two and the stepmother of one. Her husband, Drew, is deployed to Iraq. She writes every Sunday abut life at home for the wife of a deployed soldier.