Something amazing happened last summer. POD swam on her own for the very first time. She was wearing armbands but that didn’t matter because it meant she finally believed she would stay afloat. On holiday two months earlier, she’d insisted we purchase not just armbands but a rubber ring as well because she was convinced she was going to sink. Neither were particularly suitable as they restricted her movement but she refused to go in the pool without them. Thankfully we managed to ‘lose’ the rubber ring fairly swiftly and in the days that followed POD built up her water confidence.
The turning point came when she wore a Konfidence buoyancy aid as part of the kids club she was in. She had them at both the Mark Warner resorts we holidayed at and they made a significant difference to POD. She’s usually up for anything and loves bath time so to see her splashing around with her new found chums was just the best. For the two years prior, swimming pools had very much been her achilles heel.
When we returned home we ‘lost’ the armbands, bought POD a Konfidence jacket and took to the pool as a three whenever we could. In January this year she started 1-2-1 swimming lessons at Surrey Sports Park. It’s a wonderful facility, she has an amazing teacher and she’s making progress. We’ve been taking it slow. She didn’t want water on her face at all when she began but now she’s blowing bubbles with her head facing downward. She lies flat on her back too rather than looking like she’s in an uncomfortable armchair. She doesn’t always want ‘Mr Seal’ (aka a friendly dive stick that ‘pees’) and last week she made the ‘froggy legs’ position.
It’s a very exciting time for POD which is why being selected as a Konfidence #Swimologist family is a bit special. Not only will you get the chance to hear about great offers, we’ll also be sharing her progress. And believe me if she can get this excited about swimming in armbands, who knows what will happen when she can swim on her own!
The Dove family are thrilled to be working with Konfidence, thank you for having us 🙂
Congrats on becoming swimologists! Gorgeous pictures and well done on her progress!
Congratulations on being swimologists. Similarly we had a lot of angst when swimming but when N started standing at around 8-9 months (for a whole year). It was painful, lessons were full of him moaning/crying. He’d gone from loving it to hating it and refusing to join in anything. We got through it and he loves the water, and now is doing normal (non Water Babies) lessons and does everything they ask him to do (although he does moan about lessons). He’s still not swimming without a float belt though because he can’t touch the bottom, but the other day we went on our own to a local pool and he did try quite a bit without any aids. 3 metres, soon hopefully 5m and maybe by September he’ll be able to do 10m and move up a group.
It’s great to see them enjoy it.
Water confidence is something that money can not buy and those images of POD are just adorable. My boys both went swimming from 3 weeks old and are real water babies. Congratulations on your ambassadorship. I am sure that pod will come on in leaps and bounds.
Great news – POD will doubtless soon be loving the water as much as the rest of the family does.
Well done on being an ambassador! It was a non-negotiable for me that both my children learned how to swim. It’s a life saving skill and therefore a necessity.
Oh that is lovely! I must check our their website as we have a couple of little swimmers :O)
Aww she looks so happy and confident in the water!
Well done lovely, we were ambassadors last year and they are fabulous to work with – cannot wait to see Pod’s progress