Stupid Swimming Lessons

{WARNING: This Mommy is about to get ugly}

Alright so here's the situation:

B and G have been taking swimming lessons 2 days a week for the past month {This is not the first summer they have taken lessons}.

Last night was their last lesson.  When lessons ended they were given Progress Reports.

The Progress Report is broken up into 7 sections with various titles, such as Personal Safety and Stroke Development.  It ends with section labeled, Instructor's Comments.

B handed me his soggy Progress Report and I glanced at it.  As I scanned through it I was trying to help him dry off, alert G as to where we were {For some reason he wasn't able to find us.}, and bounce a fussy Baby M.

Now before I go any further I need to let you know that I am not one of those people who thinks that her child is a perfect swimmer and expects a + mark to be in each box.  For goodness sakes the kid is 6.  Having this kind of attitude, in my opinion, suggests that there is no room for growth.  Let's be honest here, we can all grow in some way.

Ok back on topic, when I got to the section labeled: Swimmer's Attitude I read,

2.  Listens to instructions and follows directions.
The teacher {who appeared to be a high school kid, but my better judgment tells me that he was at least a Freshman in college.} wrote: Messes around to {That's not a typo.  He really spelled it like that.} much with J {wrote out the other child's name}.

Now wait a minute, why am I just now learning about my child 'messing around too much' with another child?  If this problem was significant enough for you to bring it to my attention in the Progress Report maybe you, Mr. Swim Teacher, should have alerted Brent and I to the issue a little sooner.  This way we could have addressed it with B.  And maybe, just maybe it would have stopped.  Oh and on another note, I don't think it was appropriate for you to write another child's name on my child's Progress Report.  Have you heard of a little thing called confidentiality?  Since this 'messing around' was so troublesome, I'm guessing that you wrote my child's name on the other child's Progress Report.  Now in all honesty, I'm sure J is a lovely child and his family is just fantastic, but on the off chance that they are crazy psychos, I'm not too thrilled about B's name potentially being written on J's Progress Report.

Ok problem #2:

Under the same section heading I continued to read:

4.  Demonstrates caring, honesty, respect & responsibility.
The teacher wrote: sometimes/sometimes not.

Ok, could you elaborate a little here?  Maybe you could try this thing called a positive sandwich.  Here's what you do: start with something positive a child does, explain in a gentle, yet tactful way what needs to be worked on, and finish with another positive.  It's like the positives are the bun of the sandwich and the area of growth is the meat, get it?!  What specifically does he do correctly sometimes?  What specifically does he sometimes not do?  Again, I'd like to address this with B, but saying: "Sometimes you are caring, honest, respectful, and responsible and other times you’re not", doesn't help him to know what he needs to keep doing and what he needs to stop doing.

Onto problem #3:

The Progress Report ended with: Instructor's Comments.

Oh wonderful Swimming Instructor wrote:
He is a very good swimmer {Yay, a positive!} he just needs to stop messing around with J {Same kid's name written, again.} and the things we use and he will get 10 times better than he is right now.

Well thank you for the complement glad to know you could find 1 thing to let me know that he does well.  Now, back to this messing around with J thing,  it's obvious that you found it extremely troublesome {and rightfully so}, however, if it was that much trouble why in the hell did you not talk with Brent and I about this?!  I would have been more than happy to talk with B about the problem and get it corrected!

As I'm sure you can guess I was slightly upset after reading this shit junk.  In an effort to try and help B realize he made mistakes and that he needed to rectify them, I briefly explained that his teacher noted his disappointment with B messing around with J.  I continued to explain my disappointment and encouraged him to tell the teacher he was sorry.

So as we were leaving the pool B walked up to his teacher.  The teacher was standing and talking with a group of other teachers and life guards {It did look as if they were practicing some type of drills}.  He didn't even acknowledge that B was standing near him {I'm sure B did speak softly and it was more than likely difficult to hear his voice}.  Finally, B tapped him on the elbow; the teacher didn't even look at B.  B said, "I'm sorry."   The teacher, still not looking at B, muttered "it's cool."

It's cool?!  Ok his response, his attitude, and his body language tell me that he can't stand B and is very annoyed with him.

First of all buddy, the kid is 6!  While I'm not thrilled with his behavior, it is developmentally appropriate.  If you can't handle it, get another job!  Second of all, whether you like it or not you are a role model.  You put yourself in that situation when you took this job.  You did not demonstrate the attitude of a good role model!

I did try to talk with the director of the swimming lessons before we left, but she had gone home for the day.  I called and left her a voice mail message when I got home.

I also talked with B about his behavior and we came up with some better activities he could do rather than 'mess' around with J {Whatever the heck that means!}

This is from last summer when his teacher liked him.

{Stupid Swimming Lessons Update}