Swimming lesson

On Saturday, I took Yaya to her first swimming lesson. After stopping going to her old school at the end of February, she has been dragging me to get her someplace for swimming. Lei suggested to get her a real class to learn swimming instead of us taking the kids to the family fun swimming as before, so I registered her into the local YMCA swimming class.

We had been taking the kids to a gym pool to get Yaya back to the comfortable feeling with water, since we figured that our little girl might need this warming up period with parents before we could hand on to a stranger-the swimming teacher. I thought we were well prepared based on the fact that Yaya had no problem with staying in the water and swimming all by herself with the floating device during the past two weekends. Plus, she had been very excited about the beginning of this swimming class.

Unexpectedly, once we went into the pool area, she became very nervous because there were no three floater belt which she strongly required. At her old school, she could already swim very easily with only two, even tried once with only one floater. But I guess she just wanted to be sure and I could clearly feel her neverousness. Then sitting in the middle of around 20 kids, she suddenly talked to me, with tears in her eyes"mommy, what if i don't know which class i should go to?" She is, at the moment I suddenly realized, the same as me, very anxious and nervous in a not-familiar enviroment. After re-assuring that I would help her to locate her teacher, Yaya seemed to calm down a little bit. Then, while walking to the pool with the teacher and classmates, she became upset again because the teacher let go of her hand to get a hold of another crying girl. Then, no matter what the teacher tried, Yaya refused to sit close to the water. She began her tantrum, I knew. Once her fear was there, she just could not control it.

I had to get to her again and ordered her to sit closer. She did so for me. But still crying... unfortunately, it was time for the parents to step out of the pool area. On the way to the observation area, I began to blame myself, i realized at this point that no matter how big my girl grows, she is still the shy little girl. She needs the time, the experience and experiment to get herself comfortable with anything new. I was afraid that this first lesson would be ruined by her mom not knowing this. But once i arrived the observation station, i was amazed/stunned by my brave little girl...There she was, swimming in the water like an active little fish.. I was so much moved by the effort she must have fight herself with, and i knew my tears were right there around the corner of my eyes... I waved to her and showed my thumb to her.. I told her how proud I am of her later..I am, really, so proud of Yaya, my dearest daughter... for her sweetness, being so considerate sometimes, for her courage, for her ability to accommodate to the life changes..

I have been thinking about it on and off during the entire weekend... She was the center of our attention until the birth of Peter. Back at that time, we were very careful in preparing her for the new comer. We protected her very well and tried our best to help her go through her transition. And she did pretty good except for some little regression. But when we came back from China and I went back to work, I guess we just expected her to be there for us. We treated her like she should understand everything and I even seldom took a minute to think about her alone as a kid. Now when i realize it, suddenly i feel so guilty about it. She is just a kid, and still she will be a kid for a long time. We can not just expect her to meet our expectation like a miracle.

Even though i am her mother and thought i knew her best, still i learn every single day about more of her. I am glad that I noticed all of these.