Just Josiah J. -Autism Adventures: How This Started

How this blog started:

I have been sharing information on Facebook with family, friends and quite a few other people who are on my friends list, so why add a blog to that?
Well, I was suggested to make a blog by someone on my friends list: "You should really compile all of your pictures and videos together and make a blog of all of this. This is truly amazing and people should know about it. My fiance cannot swim and both of us nearly drowned when I tried to teach him. He is too old to get over the fear now and it will take much longer for him. Your son will always know what to do in the water. I applaud you for empowering him".

What she is talking about:

Originally I had posted and shared LM's swimming story on ISR's facebook page. Then I re-posted it to my own page where she commented. She was talking about LM's swimming lessons through ISR. There are 1073 pictures and 21 videos of him and three of another boy his age on my facebook, so going to have to figure out the best way to share the pictures and videos (I love taking pictures, I know not all the pictures are perfect, but still love taking pictures).
*The pictures are not in order from when they happened throughout the lesson*

What are ISR swimming lessons:

Winter clothes test

The best way to describe them are lessons where a child ages 6 months to 6 years can learn to self-rescue if they fall into a pool. Under a year they only float but after that they learn to not only float but swim to the wall or stairs to get themselves out of the pool. They do a test at the end with summer and winter clothes to make sure they can still use their skills in less optimal conditions.

Summer Clothes Test

Why we choose the lessons:

My husband and I choose to do ISR lessons because Josiah has NO fear when it comes to anything so last year he would just run straight for the pool and was ready to jump in.

He was once timed floating for 5min

Well, we did not want him to ever wonder to water and either fall in or jump in (bigger chance of this happening) and him not being able to rescue himself while we are trying to figure out where he went to. Don't get me wrong we watch him like a hawk, but he is fast and he will just go for what he wants in a split second so better to be safe then sorry is my motto with water safety. When I was younger I had a cousin who actually drowned in a lake. I have always felt that everyone should learn to swim. Which is ever more true for the state of Michigan since we are surrounded by water with water everywhere in between. It is almost impossible to avoid water here. I have worked in daycare and have always urged parents that there children should learn to swim. I even lost a child I was babysitting over telling the mom that we were going to lake and she did not want her son anywhere near the water. I explained there were life jackets from the boat and it was a completely enclosed lake so no big waves which would be great for learning to swim (this was of course before I knew about ISR- no life jackets in the water for us!). She did not like that I thought it would be impossible for him to avoid water his whole life and that he should learn to swim even if she did not. Her excuse was that too many of her family had drown, so she did not want him to go near water. This made me so sad because just that year I had heard about a teen who slipped in a pool and drown because he had never learned how to swim as a child. Kids are like sponges it is good to teach everything when they are young, swimming I believe is one of the things all should learn. What would ever happen in an emergency situation without knowing how to swim?

What happened during swimming:

Josiah at first was really excited. Daddy even got to go watch most of the first week since he did not have work because of jury duty. When he got in the water and figured out that he was going to be without mommy and daddy and going to go under water his excitement dwindled.

There were times he was scared

Swimming was hard work for him at times

By the second week though, his confidence grew and he became excited again. Once he learned how to swim he would pop out of the water with a HUGE grin on his face. Now for most people this(smiling) might be a normal daily occurrence, but for us it is not. Josiah has autism and he does not smile that often and he normally does not make much if any eye contact with people.

Day 6-First Smile

I knew that we had made the right decision in swimming after that. We discussed the price and weather it was worth it before hand and in that discussion other than self-rescue we figure he could learn how to calm himself (since you have to, to be able to float).

Just under water

Went straight into his float

Well, he also did learn how to calm himself in the water, but during the whole time he was taking swimming he threw close to no tantrums (tantrums in our household were not only a daily occurrence but we had upwards to 20 or more a day!) That was one of the most amazing outcomes of the experience. I completely was not expecting his tantrums and obsessive climbing to stop (yup, he was no longer climbing on everything-other than at the pool).

He of course had to climb the pool

By his last week of lessons he was smiling almost the whole time, giving his instructor great eye contact, and he picked up swimming and floating skills.