Mom can swim!... sort of...
It's been taking me a while to get my mom back-floating. At first I tried teaching her the most basic way I know how: let yourself go back... arch your head back, the back of your head touching the neck, and the water will probably cover pass the ears (but not into the eyes or nose). Then the body will just... float up. It didn't quite work with her. She was tensing up too much so that her legs would just fall down and take the rest of her as well. She was nervous.
The next step was to get her some floaters so that she could hold with her feet. That helped a lot more, but still she would start falling in after a while. So then we went into teaching her to thread water while on her back. With that she also became aware of how she could push her body up or move it about the area, which is nice. Little by little. She just needed to get comfortable and while she's still not 100% floating, she can hold the relaxed position for about 2 minutes. ^_^
Now she practices with a styro board too. It's all about kicks. Well, it has been a little over 3 weeks now and she can swim Front Crawl style (yey!). She still cannot put her head down in the water too much. She starts it fine and gets quite a distance in about 5 strokes, but when she starts getting in air, it looks as if she misses the coordination between strokes and breathing. She gave me quite a scare Monday. In one of those, she took in some water that went the wrong way and she couldn’t breathe even after she stopped. She calmed down once I had her by the edge of the pool and she began to breathe again. Hmmm... I may get into some water rescue courses one of these days. While I know how to swim 'alright' and how to get a person out of the water, I do not know exactly what to do when someone is in a 'safe' area, but that has just swallowed water and is 'nervous' (therefore making themselves choke even more). Gotta research more on what to do there.
I will take the next 'class' in a different way. Nothing but kicks for a while. I have to get her comfortable with the head under water while she gains a balance of how to inhaled and exhale for swimming. In other words, I need to teach her how to let her breath out under water.
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