The good news is that my child can swim. Hurray, I can read the New Yorker and Harper's at the pool without having to periodically looking to see if she's floating face down somewhere. Thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of private and group lessons and classes paid off it seems.
She was asked by the coach to swim in today's time trials. She won her heats in two of her three strokes (freestyle and backstroke, above) and posted decent times (that I haven't shared with her) for her age group. Well, she crushed, really, if you want to be clear about what happened.* That's a huge ego boost I'm sure.
The bad news is that she won the heats of two of her three strokes (freestyle and backstroke, above). Crushed, really. Now she likes competing. She's tasted the blood of victory.
Believe me, I have never pushed competing on her in anything. She already has the gene (from me, doy!). It was all but inevitable. I tell her hippie things like "to have fun" and "do your best" and I never, ever critique (much...sometimes I have suggestions). I never mention "winning" (much). But...but...but, now she's found that smoking the competition is "fun" and "doing your best."
Oh well.
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* Full disclosure: dead last in her breaststroke heat. But not DQed.
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