Team Players, Part 2: Tough Love and Treading Water

| By: Committee for Children

Summer is waning, school is on the near horizon, and my thoughts turn to my ten-year-old son’s very different but equally effective summertime coaches, Coach T (baseball) and Mr. Switzer (swimming).

In the previous installment, we met Coach T, a baseball coach who waxes poetic while teaching kids how to be highly skilled baseball players…and excellent human beings.

And then there’s Mr. Switzer. This powerfully built eighty-something man has been teaching children to swim since the mid-1960s, as many as 500 a summer. He has a reputation as a very strict, very demanding instructor who brooks no tears. Children who won’t jump into the pool will be gently but unceremoniously dropped in. The teaching formula is rigid, with lots of enforced muscle-memory-making. And yelling. “Open your eyes, open your eyes, open your eyes! Go back. Do it again!”

Getting Switzerized: It’s a family affair

We heard about kids being “Switzerized” for years before we took the proverbial plunge. To me it seemed crazy, the antithesis of all my husband and I had been working toward as parents. We practiced attachment parenting, we explained and worked things out with our children, we taught them how to express themselves emotionally and listened to them carefully when they were scared. Why on earth would we subject them to this terrifying boot camp of swim lessons? And even if we did, even if our then-three-year-old Etta, who was a fairly reasonable human being, could handle it, there was no way six-year-old Amos would put up with being given such unequivocal instruction.

Switzer-land isn’t neutral

But then we started hearing more. Mr. Switzer also had a reputation for incredible success. We were able to pick out the children at the town beach who had learned from him. It was pretty obvious: their beautiful, long, strong strokes formed a striking contrast with the doggy-paddles of their peers. Maybe we should take a closer look at the Switzer approach? We visited his pool. Turns out Mr. Switzer’s voice is gruff, yes, but his hands are unfailingly gentle. And he reads kids like nobody’s business. He knows where to place each trembling child in his beginner class: three feet away, six feet away, a length away. He knows that if kids don’t learn how to open their eyes and breathe and move properly, they can’t swim well. And in a town like ours, surrounded by lakes and rivers and ponds, not swimming well is not an option. We were in.

By now you may not be as surprised as we were to find that Amos thrived on the kind of inflexible instruction Mr. Switzer offered. Our little authority-flouting rebel quickly learned to trust Mr. Switzer, because Mr. Switzer never let him down (or drown). Amos knew exactly where he stood with him at all times. Amos learned to listen with his entire body. He learned to find his own pride in mastering new skills. (His little sister Etta, with her own world view and modus operandi, also flourished under the tough-love coaching.)

Go, team!

We, Amos’s parents, have also learned a thing or two over the years. We now aim for firmer expectations and clearer direction. We express our pride at our children’s efforts more than their achievements. Rather than force-feed them skills, we try to allow them more time and space to take in, process, and refine our lessons. I can’t “do” Coach T or Mr. Switzer, though I try to gather crumbs of their energy and style and apply them at home. But my style is the Emilie style, and it’s good, too. My hope, as Amos ventures further and further into the world, is that his way to social and emotional genius (okay, I’ll settle for social-emotional literacy) continues to be paved by family, friends, and teachers. Books and fridge magnets may help, but it’s the sum of all these different people with their different styles and high, no-nonsense expectations that will get him there.