[blindkid] swimming lessons
Heather
craney07 at rochester.rr.com
Tue Jun 1 19:34:38 UTC 2010
That's great to hear what a good job you have done, helping your daughter to
have the enriching experience of swimming. It made me think of two things.
A. If you're not able finantially to spend the money on private Yoga, swim,
gymnastics, etc teachers, it might just be better to teach your child
yourself, after you go and observe a class with sighted children. or B.
Start while they are infants, at least with the swimming, because it is
instinctual at that point and no explination is required. What worked best
for me was to have someone, a friend of the family, family member or friend
of me demonstrate everything and teach me, after having watched the
"qualified" instructor. Then when I had a foundation and was old enough to
have enough receptive language to understand positions and moves purely from
description, I could work with an ordinary teacher, in a class setting, with
no special training, and no additional fees paid. I know a woman who has
four children, one blind, one low vision and two sighted, and all of them
learned to swim as infants, and there was no real adaptation needed. Her
sighted kids have even worked out a system where their low vision or blind
sibbling will run to the side of the lake, and at a certain point they will
yell "now!" as they have figured out through trial and error when a jump or
dive needs to be started to make it a success. They also have a high diving
team at the school where they have home schooling, sports participation
privilages, and their low vision daughter is the only one really good at it
out of the four. They also have one of those rope swings where you run down
a hil, swing out over the water and then drop eight feet into the pond. I
was scared to death to try it and it took the totally blind girl helping me
through the proccess ten or twelve times before I was able to release at the
right moment and land where I needed to. She is such a pill. She's eight
and she was cackling her head off at me when I would get stuck six feet
above the ground, not wanting to let go onto the rocks, but no longer with
the momentum to get out over the safety of the water. She climbed the tree
and reeled me in with a grab bar and we tried again. I'm laughing now
thinking about it. That whole family is a stitch. I love the fearlessness
of her children, and the little girl sort of reminds me of Wendy Sue in the
children's book Wendy Sue Day, that Carol and others recommended to me
several months ago for a literacy kit project I had to complete for an
education course. I gave her a copy of the book and she liked it, and went
off to read it to her horse. Well, she has two horses and a goat, but
that's not the point. I think she read it to Marly, but I didn't ask. Wow,
this has rambeled, but point is, start young, don't over think, trust your
self, trust your child and just keep doin what you're doin.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Holloway" <rholloway at gopbc.org>
To: "NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)"
<blindkid at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2010 1:07 PM
Subject: Re: [blindkid] swimming lessons
> Kathy,
>
> When you say "lessons", is this a class or private instruction?
>
> We started Kendra (who also has no vision at all) quite young, first
> attempting classes. We stopped after the first class because despite
> early discussions with them, they were clueless in conveying the concept
> and we could see it was going to go nowhere. They started with telling
> kids to "blow out the candle" by having them hold up a finger in the
> water and then blowing at it. Not the most intuitive concept for a blind
> child of 3 or 4, and it sort of went downhill from there...
>
> Fortunately, soon after that, we found a private instructor (not
> inexpensive) who works one-on-one with all sorts of special needs kids.
> That she works with a variety of kids had given her an array of concepts
> to work with and she is VERY patient. The main adaptation has (obviously)
> been to describe and often physically demonstrate or gently manipulate
> Kendra to get the concepts. I have no doubt that her progress has been a
> good deal slower than her sighted counterparts would have been in many
> cases. While Kendra tends to stay right with (or often ahead of) her
> peers in academic areas, in this case, some things are harder for her to
> master-- it is the age old problem of a lack of incidental learning
> through observation as much as anything else-- she has, after all, never
> WATCHED anyone else swim...
>
> This has not, however, stopped her from becoming quite a good swimmer.
> She's not afraid to jump into a pool or even off a diving board or
> platform once she's comfortable she knows where the water is, and we're
> talking about water that is deep enough that she cannot touch the bottom
> of the pool. Her biggest ongoing issue is swimming straight. She (like
> most of us) naturally pulls harder with her dominant arm than the other
> and with no visual reference and very little else to guide her, it is a
> real effort to try and keep her going straight in a lane, but then our
> goal is not to have an olympic swimmer here, it is for her to have the
> experience of the motion and to enjoy herself as well as to know that if
> she falls into a lake or a pool, she can safely swim to the edge or get
> on her back and float. Where so many kids get their motion from running
> around, for our daughter, much of her motion is from swimming and also
> jumping in a trampoline. She may do that for as much as 30 minutes or an
> hour on most days-- sometimes more.
>
> Interestingly, while Kendra is rather sound sensitive-- afraid of many
> machine sounds or even applause, and avoids things like auditoriums &
> crowd noises, the fact that most of her lessons have been in an large
> indoor pool with TONS of noise seems to have no effect on her-- she likes
> the swimming so much that she ignores the loud sounds more than in any
> other situation by far. We've had Kendra in quite a few things-- yoga,
> gymnastics classes, music classes, years of dance classes, etc., but
> swimming has been far and away a favorite among her activities.
>
> One other things she really likes a lot is yoga and we have had great
> success with that too, but also in much the same circumstance-- private
> instruction with a patient instructor often with detailed demonstration
> by an instructor who doesn't mind a little girl feeling her arms, legs,
> and even body (a recent distraction as the instructor is now pregnant,
> LOL)., as she demonstrates things and then there sometimes needs to be
> some gentle manipulation of the student by the teacher as well to get
> into position, especially when learning something new. With both yoga and
> swimming, as you go further along, you have more concepts for a
> foundation and there seems to be less "hands-on" needed and more
> referring to earlier concepts-- "This is like Downward Dog, except..." or
> "remember how the back stroke feels?, well start with that and then..."
>
> Again, the key is going to be a relationship with the instructor which
> allows your child to understand how to move in and around the water. No
> matter if this is private or group teaching, there needs to me a way for
> Addison to know how to move her arms and legs the right way and what her
> body position ought to be. As there are often other instructors working
> in the same pool during our lessons with other (sighted) kids, I know it
> is not that unusual to have a good deal of "hands on" teaching in the
> water to begin with, but the things that would generally move more
> quickly to "now, watch how I do this" simply have to be described when
> possible or physically demonstrated in an appropriate way when it is not
> possible to simply describe.
>
> A well-meaning family member, when he first learned of Kendra's blindness
> commented early-on how sad he was over all the things that Kendra would
> never get to do. One of those things was actually jumping into a pool and
> swimming. He didn't know any better, nor did we I guess at that time. Now
> we (and he) have learned that Kendra is just a kid who can do whatever
> she wants with a few adaptations here and there.
>
> Sorry for the long response. If you have any more detailed questions,
> please feel free to contact me off list as well so I won't overwhelm
> everyone with this discussion!
>
> Richard
>
>
>
> On May 31, 2010, at 1:58 PM, Kathy B wrote:
>
>> Hi All-
>>
>> My daughter Addison is four and is starting swimming lessons tomorrow.
>> She's totally blind. Do any of you have any advice or suggestions that
>> would help with her or the instructor?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Kathy
>>
>>
>>
>>
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