Epiphany!

It was the first swimming lesson of term this week and J was doing his usual half-hearted dip the chin in when the teacher encouraged them to swim with faces in the water. I pointed out to him that swimming chocolate (fast becoming an institution) depends on them working hard at something new or challenging each week, not just taking part in the lesson, and suggested that his challenge for this week should be to put his face in the water flat, turn his head to the side (as if breathing whilst doing front crawl) and then put it back into the water. He hesitated, procrastinated, dipped his chin in, then his nose and then finally gave it a go properly and surfaced completely delighted with himself 😀
After the lesson he came into the toddler pool as usual while K had his lesson – and spent most of the next hour (including begging me for extra time) with his face at least three inches under the water, pulling himself along the bottom of the pool with his hands, or pushing with his feet, tickling people’s knees and only surfacing when he was either out of breath or his goggles were full of water. I think we may have a had a breakthrough 😀

Not content with that, on Thursday J helped me to prepare a pomegranate for Tots. He did one last week as well, so knows what to do now, but whereas last week he looked horrified at the idea of actually eating the thing, this week he asked if the seeds were okay to eat and on being assured that they were popped one in his mouth… and then another… and another. We have another fruit to add to our repertoire 😀

It may take a while, but I think we’ll get there 😉