Swimming!

It's funny how things work out. When I first wanted to book my eldest son in for swimming lessons, I rang around all the local pools trying to get him in on a Saturday. Unfortunately it is really hard to get in on Saturdays so I settled for a pool that offered a Friday class with their assurance that when a Saturday spot became available, the next term, my son would have priority.

Well the end of the term came and went and despite trying to change his swimming time, I was unable to. 'Okay' I thought I'll just have to stick to the Friday morning and I reconciled myself to the fact that his teacher was excellent. As the term progressed though, I really began to notice how busy Fridays were and kept wishing I could change the time. Then the swimming teacher was going away on holidays for two weeks and my diary had clasehes that I just didn't know how to work out. Eventually I got the guts up (I am not very confrontational) to call up the pool and ask to swap again.

I gratted last week about how I had managed to change the lesson time to a Wednesday afternoon... so yesterday we set off for the new lesson. It was a long drive there as we got stuck in peak hour traffic but eventually we arrived and I found the new teacher AND an out-of-control group of kids! This teacher had no control over the class. I've never seen anything like it. The other children in the group were jumping off the step when they were meant to be sitting and waiting as well as getting in and out of the pool, splashing each other and general misbehavior.

I was so proud of my son as he sat on the step by himself doing the right thing (partly because he's not confident enough to be jumping around in deeper water) and partly because he would not want to get in trouble in that scenario. Parents were yelling at their kids from the sideline, the teacher was speaking in an unprofessional manner and basically it looked like an accident waiting to happen. I sat with my eyes glued to pool in case I had to jump in and rescue someone at any given moment- that's how bad it was!

Anyway, while still in a state of shock, I tried to ask some parents sitting near-by if this was the normal teacher and whether it was usually like this to which one dad replied, "Yes. It's #@*# house isn't it?" and then proceeded to keep yelling at his son to sit on the step. That was the final straw as soon as the lesson finished I was close to tears. I quickly showered my son and geared myself up to go and complain.

The long and short of it was this... I got my son swapped to a Saturday class AND a free lesson this Saturday! After all that I ended up achieving what I'd hoped for in the start. As I said, it's funny how things work out. So I am grateful for this turn of events that has enabled us to get in to a Saturday class where my husband or I or both can watch our son swim.