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I’m writing this poolside at our gym, watching swimming classes. My kids aren’t in the water right now, but I’ll have the pleasure of watching their classes in a couple of weeks.

How do you teach children to swim when you don’t know whether they’ve ever been in water before? This was the problem Peter and I faced when we adopted our kids K and M from Russia 18 months ago at ages nearly-four and nearly-three.

It was the dead of winter in New England when we came home from Moscow. Our kids needed an outlet for their considerable excited energy, and we were tired of having them trash the house. We did not at the time have a back yard, and we were only beginning to learn about proper snow-clothes and toys, and we needed an activity we could do even after dark. To aid the attachment process, we wanted something that would enable physical contact and trust. Since Peter and I are strong swimmers, and I’m a devoted kayaker, we settled on swimming. But how to help our kids learn? We had no idea whether they could swim, whether they’d been in water over their heads, or whether they’d even worn bathing suits. If they’d had swimming experience, was it in a pool or an outdoor setting? What did they know about using a locker room? Had they even taken a shower?

So we tackled the problem. To start with, we took K and M swimming at the gym with my brother Neil and his three kids, all of whom are older than ours. Neil is a fine swimmer and has taken dozens of children swimming, so we felt he could do an informal assessment. As we played in the water, he observed that K seemed to know that water could resist her and that she needed to move her arms to stay up. She seemed to have no clue about kicking. He saw that M didn’t know how to move around but was able to hold his breath. We all saw that both kids were afraid to let go of the wall or a trusted adult but enjoyed playing. Good evidence that they’d been in a decent amount of water before.

Next, we brought M and K in for a formal assessment of their swimming ability. The aquatics director at the gym seemed surprised that, at their ages, they wouldn’t paddle even a little bit on their own, but she’d never seen kids who’d been adopted only a month prior to assessment. “There is a considerable trust issue with swimming,” she told us. She placed them in the way-beginner range.

Our next step was to enroll both kids in private lessons. Since neither child was willing to swim independently and neither child was fluent in English, we agreed that I would join them in the water for lessons as a co-teacher and translator. I thought of “the lesson” as beginning with changing into the bathing suit at home, through unpacking in the locker room, through the time in the water, and ending with the locker room shower and packing up. I brought them on my own between lessons and worked on such skills as getting in and out of the pool, counting “One…two….THREE!”, and washing one’s hair in the shower. In the bathtub at home, I encouraged them to kick and blow bubbles. After a month of lessons, K and M were ready for group classes.

We’ve continued with group classes since that time, which was over a year ago. I’m pleased to report that K and M are now both “Preschool Level III”–that is, able to swim independently without flotation devices. K can bob, retrieve objects from the bottom, and do somersaults. M can hold his breath a scarily long time and freak out lifeguards with his twisting dive. I find them a joy to swim with and take them as often as I can, separately and together.

A couple of weeks ago, while driving to the pool, I noticed M yawning in the back seat and asked whether he felt tired.

“No, Mom,” he replied. “I feel swimmy.”

by Deborah L. Blicher

Photo graciously provided by whiskymac, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.