Magic and Mayhem

Today I took my girls to homeschool swimming.  I watched them fling themselves into the water again and again– swimming, diving, splashing and playing like they had been born in the water.

They weren’t always so fearless.  These are girls who cried when water ran down their foreheads in the bathtub when they were toddlers.  These are girls who failed swimming class because they couldn’t put their faces underwater.  These are girls who were once scared, shy and tentative in the water.

I could have insisted on more swimming classes.  I could have thrown them into the deep end, telling them to sink or swim.  I could have nagged them, shamed them, told them to stop being silly.

Maybe we could have done daily drills– blowing bubbles, kicking our legs, working on it till they got it right.

We did none of that.

Instead, we played.  I waited.  I trusted.  We got season passes to the city pool and stayed in lots of motels with pools.  We got together with families whose kids enthusiastically jumped into the deep end.  We gave them water wings and noodles and goggles and nose plugs.  We signed them up for swim class when they wanted to try again, and let them know we didn’t care if they passed or not.  We went to lakes and the ocean and danced in the rain with the water running down our faces.  And they got better and better, braver and braver, all on their own.

My girls are now better swimmers than I am.  Today I watched Victoria throwing Anna in the water, both girls grinning from ear to ear.  I watched Anna jump in with wild abandon and Victoria swim along the bottom of the pool like a silent shark.

Sometimes I think the hardest part of homeschooling is waiting.  It’s trusting that if we clear the way and give them the tools, that our children can do it on their own.  It’s realizing that we don’t need to force children to use artificial exercises to learn to read or walk or talk or swim.  And they love it all the more, because the learning was fueled by their own enthusiastic joy.