Swimaversary Part One

On April 8th, 2014 Josiah has been swimming for a year. We decided to celebrate his swimaversary with some other pages. I mentioned that it has changed his and our life/lives forever. I wanted to go in more detail with what I mean by that. I have talked about swimming and loving it in several posts. I have not gotten down and talked strictly about the benefits and how it has helped. I will share what I viewed and even share some links for things that are not so visible that I have learned through information I have learned over time. I will also share each of these in a separate blog no matter how long or short so the whole thing will not become overwhelming to read all in one blog post. :)

*ok I started this shortly after his swim aversary, but with no swimming, end of semester craziness, and a few other things that have pushed it to the sidelines I am just now getting to writing more on it*

Self Control 

I will start with the first one we noticed. Better self control. This was seen through a couple of changes. The first thing that he started began when he was 11 months old. He started climbing to high heights for his age and it was not only a daily, but multiple times a day kind of thing. He did not even start walking until he was 16 months because of course why walk when you can climb everything. His climbing started to lessen and become not as common of a occurrence in the house. The second think that became less of an issue I have already posted about in the blog post Sometimes I Forget, which goes into great detail about how his tantrums and meltdowns had lessened with swimming/had been almost no existent. The only case when they would show up is when he had an outside source that would trigger it. He used to have meltdowns/self harm due to lack of activity. This is one of the reasons we have so many toys for him to choose from. He always has to be busy doing something. If he gets board he gets into self harm. Biting himself leaving marks, pinching, throwing himself on floor, head butting the floor or walls. He will bite chairs, games, toys or other objects when he is board or angry. All of this calmed down with swimming and picks back up every time we stop swimming. We have been off for three weeks now and he has hit another kid at therapy, threw a toy towards someone there and has picked up increased anger outburst at home as well. Kroc center has started their new hours so I am extremely thankful for that. Sadly we can not start this week because of me. Without going into too much detail I will just say I do not feel well and AF is not so nice this month.

Any parent I am sure can tell you self control in a little one is hard and any ASD parent can tell you it is a huge thing. Self control over outbursts(the ones that can be controlled) is just really HUGE. I was so relieved that I was not as worried about another self harm episode being around the corner. With less self harm and him more aware of his surroundings as he was not going into constant meltdowns he began to learn/grow/mature. He was picking things up at an astounding rate and still is which brings us to another benefit that I will talk about next...

Cognitive Development

Part three is on sleep (link also available at bottom of part two if you want to go in order they were written).