My now 11 year old started swimming independently at 2 years and 4 months of age. Right from the start she had a lovely flutter kick and I honestly attribute that to all the assisted kicking we did with her as a baby. She did the occasional lesson at our-home based swim school and developed some decent basic strokes fairly quickly. However, when she started school, we noticed some behaviours in her. Behaviours that would ultimately lead to a diagnosis of Autism at the age of 10. These behaviours also made it very difficult for her to attend standard classes and progress from basic strokes. She didn’t really listen to the teacher or didn’t understand the instruction, spent a lot of time underwater or distracted and accomplished very little in terms of improvement in each class. We quickly moved her to private lessons which were much more beneficial.
Fast forward to today and we still struggle finding the right fit for her. Technically she was junior squad ready, behaviourally, socially and emotionally she was back in learn to swim. We had a few attempts with trials which would normally result in the swim school referring us back to learn to swim or our daughter informing us how much she hated the teacher and was never going back. Our daughter is easily annoyed, you just have to look at her the wrong way for her to decide that you are an awful human being and will be for eternity. It takes a long time for her to build relationships. We did have a brief period with a very patient coach who appealed to her quirky sense of humour and enjoyed some success with her, sadly that coach was quickly poached, and our dream run came to an end. For now, I’m resigned to the fact that I am it. I am the coach, and she loves it. When I say loves it, I mean in the capacity in which she shows love, which is in a very unorthodox way.
Up until recently a typical session would be 45 minutes long and would consist of around 10 to 15 minutes of actual swimming. At the end of it, I would be tearing my hair out, she would be having a meltdown and we would have achieved very little if anything. She would, in my eyes, waste so much time, arguing with me over the technique and whether or not I am teaching it correctly or whether or not she was doing it correctly; bobbing underwater and doing tricks; adjusting goggles, caps, swimwear etc etc. It caused me to review everything. My teaching style vs her needs. We were clashing on every level.
I ran an analysis on my daughter to establish how her behaviours might affect her ability to participate and came up with the following:
· She hates to be rushed, everything must be in her time.
· She has trust issues and won’t take my qualified word for it instead needing back up from a more authoritative source.
· She has sensory issues relating to pool water temperature, goggles, caps, swimwear.
· She needs an explanation for everything, and I mean everything! It is not sufficient to say “that’s just how it’s done” she needs to know why.
· She needs to see how it is done and not be told how it is done.
· She needs to focus on one thing at a time and struggles with multi-tasking.
· She insists on perfection within herself and becomes disheartened when she feels it is anything less.
· She requires fine details on minute movements well above her skill level.
· She requires knowledge of rules applying to competition well above her skill level.
· She needs things to be done in her order and according to her pre-meditated plan.
· She needs an environment that is not busy and noisy.
· She is very inflexible and doesn’t respond well to change.
I then thought about how I could meet those needs and came up with the following lesson plan…
DD decides when we will train and where we will train, I tend to encourage quiet times in environments that I know will not overwhelm her. I pack her favourite goggles (the one pair that causes the least amount of angst) and she selects her own swimwear.
Before starting our session, we have a detailed discussion about what I have planned and why I have planned it. At this point in time, she has the opportunity to raise any concerns with me regarding the program and canvas all of her whys? We may also watch some videos from authoritative sources to alleviate any concerns she has over my qualifications. These videos can also help to show her what it is she is meant to be doing. This is backed up by poolside demonstrations by myself once we start. I try to talk less and show more. I let her choose the order of events. We discuss focus points and try and limit these to one at a time breaking the skills down to the point where sometimes we take leg or arm movements completely out of the equation. I make sure that praise is offered up regularly to boost her self-esteem. I respond to her requests for finer details relating to movements and/or rules even if they are well above her level but encourage her not to worry too much about them even though I know she will. Most importantly I demonstrate patience well beyond any level that would ordinarily be required for a neurotypical swimmer. Patience when she needs to adjust her goggles, patience when she needs to spin or flip or submerge while I’m talking to her, patience when she insists on repeating the same thing over and over until she feels she has perfected it, patience for when she gets frustrated and needs to decompress, patience for when she insists on demonstrating a skill in the water instead of just asking a question.
We still have bad days. Days where no matter what I do it just doesn’t go all that great and that’s okay. It is incredibly exhausting even on a good day and for that reason I’m still on the hunt. Looking for that one individual who can meet her needs, someone who can fully transition her from Junior Squad reject to Squad Swimmer. Combined with continued therapies I live in hope that one day she will join her Neurotypical comrades in regular squad sessions. Until then we will just keep swimming and I’ll be forever grateful to her for helping me to become a better teacher.
