For much of his life, my 8-year-old son has been repulsed by swimming. In the Mommy & Me swim class, while other young toddlers were splashing about and relishing all the silly fun, Adam would dig his fingers into my arms and neck and shout in my ear until I moved him to the safety and security of the side of the pool. And not much has changed since then. This year, much like last year and the year before that, he regularly moans over having to go to his semi-private swim lesson once a week. That was still the feeling right up to this summer…when he had an Olympian change of heart.
But first, a little more background. Despite all his swim lessons, Adam never made much progress in the pool. And according to his teachers, that was largely due to lack of trying. Last summer, we were enjoying a day at a lake when he and I had very painful conversation about him wanting to swim out to the dock, and me insisting that he wasn’t ready. And that if he wanted to do things like that he really needed to, for starters, learn to swim.
Frankly, his complaining had gotten so bad this spring that my wife and I agreed to ourselves that we wouldn’t force him to go back to swim class in the fall.
Fast forward to May. We’re visiting a friend with an indoor pool in his apartment building, and Adam shocks everyone by swimming the length of the pool with a reasonably sharp stroke. Could that be our swim-hater?
Then, one day after summer camp, he reports proudly to me and my wife that he’s one of the best swimmers in his bunk.
And then came the Olympics with Michael Phelps, Missy Franklin, and all of the other medal-winning Americans.
We watched a lot of the games, and one night I asked, “Hey Adam, if you could be an Olympic athlete in any sport, what sport would it be?”
Without hesitation, he answered: “Swimming.”
It was one of those parenting moments when my exasperation (for all the torture he has put me through over the years) was inseparable from my surprise and joy.
It’s amazing how a little success can inspire more success. Personally, I think it was the camp experience—even more than watching all of those medal winners on TV—that was the real inspiration. But Adam never would have stayed with his lessons if my wife hadn’t been a bit of Tiger Mom about it, insisting that it was a life skill he had to have.
“You realize, of course, that being an Olympic swimmer would entail taking some more lessons this fall,” I observed to him.
“Sure,” he answered. “No problem.”
–Eric Messinger
