Barely 10 minutes into last week’s swimming lesson, Littlest Wombat stood before me at the edge of the pool, dripping and shivering. “I’m not doing swimming ever again,” he declared, with hot, angry tears. “You’re already making life hard enough for me! You don’t need to make it any harder!”
Well, I knew he wasn’t that keen on swimming lessons (or that co-operative), but what on earth had precipitated this outburst? He was clearly in full melt-down mode and there was no way I could have enticed, cajoled or threatened him back into the pool.
I spoke briefly to Jake, his teacher. No, nothing in particular had happened, except that my Wombat was refusing to let go of the edge of the pool when asked. I thanked him, and said that it was probably better to leave swimming for today. Hopefully (although it felt more like wishful thinking), we’d be back next week.
I wrapped Littlest Wombat in his towel and spoke to him by the pool.
“How are we making life hard for you with swimming lessons?” I asked.
“You just are,” he sobbed. “Things are hard enough already. And I’ll never be able to stop them, because when I get good, you’ll just keep moving me to the next class.”
He had a point. But he was starting from a fairly low skill base.
“I’ve told you, sweetheart, when you can swim like Matilda, you can stop lessons.” Matilda, his cousin, is the same age and quite a good little swimmer. I tried to reassure him. “You know we love you very much and we’d never do anything to make life difficult for you.”
“I know,” he sobbed, “But you are making life difficult for me because I’m crying myself to sleep every night.”
Oh – the joys of exaggeration, tempered by a pinch of truth. Here was the real culprit – his slow transition to feeling comfortable at his new school.
Our Wombat dog-paddled valiantly along an interminable 25 metres of pool – coming last, whilst doing a good impression of not quite drowning.
“You only need to do lessons until you can swim better,” I explained.
“But you’ll just keep moving me from one class to another,” he wailed.
“Yes, sweetheart, because as you get good at one level, you move to the next. You don’t stop just because you’ve finished the bottom level.”
“But I’m a good enough swimmer already!”
Fundamental disagreement on that point. “Not yet,” I told him.
“But I am!” he insisted.
“The swimming teacher needs to decide that – not you.” I tried to stay calm and patient. I needed a way to stop the conversation. “Let’s go.”
We walked slowly towards the entrance, Littlest Wombat’s towel clutched tightly around him. He started to calm down, while my mind was in a whirl, wondering how I could get him back to the pool next week.
Why bother, you might think? Just leave it for another term, another year. It’s clearly too stressful for him. Why put everyone through this angst? I think these are questions that parents of kids with ASD constantly ask themselves as we try to cope with apparently innocuous situations which put a huge burden on our kids.
Swimming history
I submitted to swimming lessons as a child. I didn’t particularly like them. But I did them because I had no choice. Like eating your greens, they were “good for you”! All the Wombats had regular swimming lessons when young, but as after school activities, speech therapy and OT took over our week, Littlest Wombat’s lessons were just too hard to maintain. Even Saturdays were spoken for. And there was my sanity to consider, also.
Until the end of last year – and swimming sports. Our Wombat dog paddled valiantly along an interminable 25 metres of pool – coming last, whilst doing a good impression of not quite drowning. We realised that we had to fit swimming lessons in somehow. Come hell or high water. (I reflected briefly that Hell was winning.)
Littlest Wombat wasn’t impressed when we told him that he needed to start swimming lessons again. “But I can already swim,” he protested.
“Yes, but not quite well enough,” we told him. “Your cousins have lessons every week.”
“But I can already swim!” he repeated.
“You can float really well, and you’re great at swimming underwater. But you need to be able to swim properly. You just have to do it. There’s no argument.” Of course, there was. But you never win arguments with someone who has an answer to everything.
Rebooting the swimming program
This began with a week of lessons at Warrnambool during the summer holidays. It wasn’t plain sailing. Littlest Wombat didn’t want to do “school outside school”, as he put it. He didn’t agree with the concept of just doing what he was asked – even with the prospect of chips afterwards. Yet despite a minor meltdown before the first lesson, we managed to get through the week. Onward and upward, we thought hopefully.
Term 1 began and we duly enrolled him for lessons at the local pool. Not happy. “School outside school”, you see. I almost had to drag him to the pool for the first lesson. For while Littlest Wombat loves water and is quite content to be in a pool, lessons are a different matter. He’s no longer in control. And, as we are rapidly learning, is very literal and inflexible about the proper time for lessons of any sort.
So, back to the his first lesson. I got him to the pool. He tried to run away. I caught his arm and returned him to the water. He tried to clamber out. I got him back in again, with a mixture of threats and inducements (food – again), then spent the rest of the lesson keeping a watchful eye on him as he kept trying to escape. When not doing this, he blithely glided under the surface of the water, evading the teacher’s gaze and ignoring her instructions.
During first term, Littlest Wombat didn’t make it easy for Corinne, his patient but long-suffering teacher. The swimming school supervisor, Gemma, commented that ability-wise, he could move up a level, but his behaviour had to improve. I was less convinced about his ability, but she was spot-on about the behaviour.
During the second class of second term, Gemma approached me again. How was Littlest Wombat finding his lessons? We talked a bit about his behaviour. It was starting to get difficult for the other students in the class. Maybe he should move classes – or even have individual lessons? I groaned inwardly. I so want him to learn the life skills that come from being in a class. And an individual lesson would be even more intense for someone who didn’t want to be there in the first place, I thought.
“Maybe he’d find it easier with a different teacher?” Gemma suggested. “One of our male teachers?”
That had potential.
“And maybe if he was in a smaller class?” she considered.
“Oh, yes,” I agreed instantly. “Smaller class sizes always make it easier. Less waiting around and less chance to get cold.” My eternal bugbear.
“Leave it with me,” she said. “We’re very keen to work with you to find something that suits.”
Aren’t you just so grateful when someone takes this approach? You’re super- aware when your child plays up, even if there are perfectly understandable reasons. It’s bliss when people are genuine about wanting to find a way through. And that was how Littlest Wombat started lessons with Jake.
Booting out the reboot
“That’ll be good, won’t it sweetheart? A smaller class with a new teacher!” I talked it up, to indifferent shrugs. But the first lesson seemed to go well. However, then came the second lesson – last week’s.
By the time we reached reception, Littlest Wombat had calmed down. Spotting flippers in a discount box, he asked for a pair.
Me: (Seizing an opportunity) “I’ll get you some if you go back to swimming next week.”
LW: (Stubborn) “I’m not going back until I get a pair.”
(My mother’s reaction to this when I told her was, “Oh, I hope you didn’t say ‘Yes’? Then he just gets his own way.” So true. The eternal challenge. I don’t want to raise spoiled brats. But he needs to be able to swim – that’s my battle right now.)
Me: (Firing back) “Sure.” We looked in the discount box – no flippers his size. “That’s okay – I’ll get them from Rebel on Thursday.” All good. Yes? No. He imposed another condition – one I couldn’t meet.
LW: “And I have to be allowed to use themb in my swimming lesson. I’ve seen other kids using them.”
Me: “Sweetheart, I can ask, but I’m not the swimming boss. I can’t promise that. What if you can use them for freestyle but not breaststroke?”
LW: (Mulish) “It’s all or nothing. If I can’t use them in the whole lesson, I’m not going back.”
Phew. He’s just trying to create control in a situation where he has relatively little. I apologised again that he felt we were making life hard for him and that it was making him sad. (Why do I feel the need to keep doing this? To acknowledge his feelings.) I explained that I made life hard for his sister when I made her exercise, because her health and safety was important to us.
We sat outside for about ten minutes and I tried to draw out what he found difficult about swimming. He said that his legs hurt a lot when he swam which was why he wanted flippers. Fair enough. Maybe. A smidge. But then… with all his requests covered, he threw in something from left field.
Coping strategies – an alien concept
Although I have three children with ASD, I’ll never really understand quite what they have to manage as part of everyday life. But I have seen them create some extremely elaborate coping strategies. Littlest Wombat has adopted an unusual way of explaining why he finds some things challenging. He has another identity – that of an alien “symbol gander” from the planet Elemental and Non-Elemental.
Don’t get me wrong – imagination is a wonderful thing. But when your child’s imaginative coping strategy ends up creating even more difficulties, you find yourself wishing that it wasn’t quite so vivid, or taken to heart so strongly.
Littlest Wombat must have felt cornered by my ready acquiescence to his requests – so he resorted to something for which I had no answer, because he could just invent new excuses as he went along. I had my iPad with me, for doing “Wombat work” during his lesson, so typed as he spoke. The following exchange is verbatim.
LW: “Chlorine weakens water-type symbol ganders. The chlorine makes my legs hurt. So, basically, take all chlorine out of all swimming pools.”
Me: “But what about the germs?”
LW: “Well, they actually make it easier for the water symbol ganders.”
Me: “How?” (I should have ended the conversation here. Morbid curiosity propelled me on.)
LW: “Cos they’re water germs, which are good for water symbol ganders, and they don’t really affect humans much.”
I took issue with this, so he moved on!
LW: “The flippers make it easier, because my legs get hurt easily with the chlorine.”
Hmm. It has never been a problem before… And he’s spent hours in pools.
Me: “So… If you have flippers…?”
LW: “It will make it easier, because then I’ll go faster, which means I won’t have to move my legs as hard, which means that even though the chlorine will still be affecting my health, it won’t hurt my legs. It’s just my legs won’t hurt. The chlorine makes me slower, ‘cos it affects my brain telling my legs to make me move slower. In fact, it’s actually the chlorine which has all the bad germs.”
Ring, ring! Warning bells! Time to stop the conversation! Are you listening, Jennie? No?
Me: “Why do you say that?”
LW: “It’s too complicated for humans. You’d have to be part robot to understand, and only symbol ganders are part robot.” (He’s also part dragon. That’s another story.)
Me: “You’ve said before that I understand. Will you try me?”
LW: “Even for me it’s too complicated. I’m only 2,579,000 years old, and for a symbol gander, that’s quite young. … ‘Cos the only way a symbol gander can die is by getting killed by somebody or by an infection … But ‘cos symbol ganders are very peaceful people, they rarely die.”
The conversation continued for a few more minutes, in which time I found out many more interesting facts about symbol ganders. While on one hand it’s sweet and quaint and amusing, we find it really worrying that he gets so immersed in this world. Surely, Littlest Wombat needs to develop some different strategies to help him.
Me: “So remind me, how am I going to help you next week with swimming?” Let’s reinforce the expectation that he will go back to swimming next week.
LW: “You know, with the flippers. You have to get me the flippers and be allowed to use the flippers for all the types of swimming in class before I’ll do it. Or, if we can’t, then I just won’t do the swimming lessons. But don’t bother telling Daddy because he doesn’t believe me about being a symbol gander.”
Here’s another tension. I try and walk a fine line between acknowledging what my Wombat thinks, and telling him that he needs to try and do things the way they’re done on Earth. Hubby Wombat scoffs at the mask of alien identity, so never has the conversations that eventually tease out the root cause of Littlest Wombat’s worries.
Me: “But lots of other people won’t understand that either, too, you know.”
LW: “There are some people who believe me.” He lists them. They include his cousins. (I’m not sure that my brother realises his children are aliens!)
Right. Enough was enough. We began walking to the car. Littlest Wombat wanted the keys, thinking he’d get to the car before me. I joked (silly me), well, I suppose you’re part dragon. Are you going to fly?
Of course not. Apparently, symbol ganders’ powers don’t work on Earth because of something in the Earth’s gravity.
Me: “But then why does chlorine affect you? That doesn’t make sense.”
LW: “Because our powers don’t affect anything on Earth, but things affect our powers.”
Never argue with an Aspie – especially one who’s a symbol gander. So, my task is to buy flippers. Littlest Wombat’s task is to keep his word and rise to the challenge of his lesson. Watch this space.
