The last I talked about my daughter’s swim career, she’d passed lifeguard training, and received her certification.

And. . . she continued to work as a swim instructor, until she got so busy with basketball and a pageant. In short, she took off a month or so from work.

Today she got to go back to the pool and shadow with another lifeguard. She gets to do this a few times before she can get her own lifeguarding hours.

I have been wanting to get my other daughters in the pool for a while, so I thought we’d hang out at the Y while the oldest daughter did her shadowing.

I had planned to leave the non-swimmers at home, but we ended up taking the baby with us. My 9 year old and almost 8 year old daughters had swim lessons when they were younger, but not for the past 3 years. They both started when they were 3 or so, and the older girl was ready to work on swimming lengths when they stopped taking lessons.

I have been trying to get them back in lessons ever since, but we’ve had a few obstacles in the way. I hope to enroll them both this summer. They need the work. The 9 year old needs to boost her stamina. She keeps stopping and standing when she should be swimming.

The almost 8 year old doesn’t know how to do any strokes. She can doggie paddle and do a little back stroke. I urged her to work on her streamline kick past the flags. She managed to do it once or twice before she started pulling her arms out of streamline and just tried swimming underwater and trying to breathe. She has the stamina, not the skills.

Meanwhile, the baby was cold, so I tried to get her used to the water. She enjoyed jumping up and down, and I even coaxed her to blow a few bubbles. I didn’t want to blow her trust by bobbing her under the water like I used to. I’d rather she volunteer to do that. She really liked throwing sinkers down to the bottom of the pool for her sisters to fetch.

I used to have the attitude that I’m a homeschool mother; I should be able to teach my own children to swim. I could get them to a certain point, remembering what they’d learned in lessons, but I didn’t know how to get them beyond that point. It’s time to consult the professionals.

How did your children learn to swim?