Hannah and the Swim Team

One activity I have always wanted my kids to try is swimming. 

I was a swimmer for a large part of my childhood and I think it is great excercise and something to keep the kids busy during the summer.

Enter this year and the monologue in my head about Hannah trying to be on the swim team, "she's going to, she's not going to... should I push her to do this or not?...she really should... oh but what if it's too hard?"

With a little bit of a nudge from a friend and a pep talk to Hannah we went out Tuesday to check everything out. 

All winter I had been telling her that she would have to swim across the pool on her own.  I told her is was very tough but I thought she could do it, and that it wa a big pool.  I guess I should have told her it was a BIG pool.  To a six-year-old, 25 meters is a loo-ooo-oo-ng way.  She got in and swam across, where I met her and saw she was crying. 

Poor kid! 

I gave her another pep talk quickly, saying that she needed to try to finish today, and then I went back to sit down.  Let's just say I felt like the worst of mother of the year.  The gut-wrenching feeling of 'uh-oh' and 'should I have pushed this' was all I could think about for the next 45 minutes.  She continued on... resting on the lane line (a big no-no)... as she went.  A coach pulled her aside to work on her back floating for a few minutes, but all in all she did exceptional for her first day, in my opinion.  Her coach told me she didn't have any worries that she would do fine. 

Hannah got out of the pool and was still pretty upset.  She is just the type that thinks she has to be good right now... and has a tough time seeing that EVERYONE has to practise.  So we talked it out all night, explaining that it was her first day and that we really thought she could do it.  I told her she could cry TODAY about it, but tomorrow we were moving on. 

It totally worked!  She woke up Wednesday and actually used the phrase, "I GET to go to swim today!"

She ended Wednesday's practise with a smile and a million questions about the team, so I knew we were good to go.

This of course begs the question, how far should you push your kids to try new and difficult things?