Missing swimming = guilty mummy
Pah to illness and colds. It’s definitely the start of Autumn and with it seems to come the onslaught of winter colds. So much for my vitamin C and zinc combination that worked well last year, but has failed in my attempt to stave off the colds for this year.
Both N and I have had colds over the last 2-3 weeks and although if it’s a minor cold I’d probably still go swimming, lots of coughing and being totally bunged up doesn’t make it easy swimming, so we’ve missed two weeks. The first week N hadn’t been that well the day before being really cuddly and tired, but this week was because of me.
Now most people taking their children to our swimming classes switch between parent, so one will take the child swimming regularly, but the other will step in as required. Not us. It’s me and me alone, as the OH doesn’t do swimming, and definitely wouldn’t go along to a class environment. On holiday, at a push he’d get in the pool (mostly to annoy me!), but at a public swimming pool, not a chance.
So if I’m ill, I always feel really bad for N as there’s no one else to take him, so he has to miss out. It’s not like we can catch up during the week either, with me working.
Whenever events clash with swimming lessons, people always ask why we don’t miss it ‘just for one week’, but if you miss it once or twice for fun occasions, sods law says that term you’ll also end up with lots of illnesses that aren’t suitable for swimming with, so you end up missing more.
Thankfully N doesn’t seem to notice when he doesn’t go. When we go, he always gets exciting seeing the swim bag by the door in the morning ready to pick up after lunch. He tells me ‘I’m going swimming’ in the morning when we head out to town, even if his swimming lesson isn’t until after lunch, and if we drive in the direction of swimming, he’ll commentate on the way saying that we’re going swimming.
But when we’re not going he doesn’t mention it, even if his dad asks ‘are you going swimming?’, he doesn’t get worked up if I tell him not this week. That’s a relief, as the fact he’s missing out for a week (or 2 in this case) makes me feel bad enough if it’s down to me rather than him.
So my tips for making every lesson count for your child:
- Never get ill, child or parent (highly unlikely, although unless N’s really off colour, or contagious, I’d still take him)
- Have a back-up person who can take them. Other parent, grandparent, although it does help if they’ve been before or at least seen the activities they do so they’re not going in blind
- Make up the lessons at another time if you can then they don’t miss out.
Unfortunately I never manage to do any of these, but I just hope that N’s not missed too much when we return for the next lesson.
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Disclosure: I blog for Water Babies, all writing and opinions are my own.
I’ve stopped signing up to anything that requires regular attendance as there is always a reason why I can only end up attending 2 out of 6 classes so we now only go to pay as you go classes.
That’s a good idea with children when they’re young. Ours is unfortunate because it’s 2 on a Saturday afternoon so can screw up the whole weekend if there’s a big family event or if we need to go away for the weekend, but thankfully we don’t tend to miss too many over the year.
There’s also not many classes around that are pay as you go as I suppose they need to know that classes will be worth running when venues need renting, or that they’re not over subscribed.