A Huge Milestone

The past three weeks have been a real turning point for Nina. She has always had a fear of getting her face wet. Even when she was a toddler, she used to scream through her bath time because she didn't want to get her head wet when we washed her hair. It wasn't fun. We'd go to the pool, and she'd love to be in the water, but she would get upset if she got her face spashed, and wouldn't hear of even considering putting her face in the water. We kept working with her but started to think that we'd have to get her swim lessons to have someone else teach her how to swim than us. We figured maybe she'd do for another adult in a class setting what she wouldn't do for us, but we knew she would learn to swim quickly if she just put her face in, so we waited. Anyway, we tried a few more things by just trying to get her to jump in the water to us (if we'd catch her without going under). Even that took a lot of convincing. She would stand on the side of the pool and fret for awhile before finally trusting us enough to catch her.

One day after doing a lot of catching her in the water, we got her to jump in holding one of our hands. She did that and got her face a little wet and realized that she would survive. Then another milestone came when she actually jumped in the pool by herself. She was only jumping into the three feet, but you'd think she was getting ready to jump off the edge of a huge cliff. She did it once and was so proud of herself, but she wouldn't do it again. She wanted to do it, but she could bring herself to do it. Instead of talking someone away from jumping off a ledge, I stood there in the water for like 15 minutes trying to talk her into jumping off the side. She couldn't bring herself to do it again, so when the lifeguards called break and we had to go home, she was so upset with herself that she cried all the way home. I felt really bad for her because I wanted her to be able to do it for her. We both just wanted her to know that she could get over her fear and really enjoy the water.

Anyway, that was three weeks ago, and I took this video today. Needless to say, the fear of getting her face wet has passed. She's "swimming" all over the 3 ft. section of the pool, and she loves to go into the deep part of the pool, jump in all by herself, spring off the bottom to Mark or I, then she swims to the side of the pool. She is very proud of herself, and we're proud of her too!