aquinas, this definitely goes in the brag! Getting him comfortable enough to relax and try new things in the water is a way huge deal. Shrugging off a splash in the face - - - well, that's truly epic! Congrats to you both.

That's great, aquinas! And kudos to you for patiently giving him the time to acclimate.

Here's a trick I used to use during one on one lessons when I used to teach kids to swim to help them get over their fear of immersing their faces/getting water up their noses and when I had long hair.

First wait for them to be relaxed and start a splashing 'fight' 9 times out of 10 they will enjoy splashing you more than they hate getting splashed. Obviously, allow them to give more than they get. In the midst of the splashfest, Dip your face into/under the water and get your hair sodden.

Now, get in close to them (almost face to face) and waggle your head to allow the water in your hair to spray out onto them including their face. While doing this laugh as though you have found the ultimate trick. After a few times most kids will try to do it and forget their fear while they are doing it. When they do this, ham it up and act as though they have really got you this time to encourage them to repeat the exercise. Eventually you can point out that they no longer fear getting their face wet.

YMMV

Thanks folks!

Madeinuk, thanks for the idea! I suspect there will be a downstream opportunity to use it. We made progress yesterday by pretending to "paint" each others' faces and heads in wild animal prints with water.

That's awesome aquinas!

DS7 also has sensory issue that were making it hard to learn to swim (actually, both my kids did). DS has refused up until now to either jump into the pool or put his face and head into the water. This is after many, many private lessons and many instructors encouraging him to do so.

He finally seems to have overcome this, and I'm not sure why or how. At the start of the latest session he just decided he was going to learn to do this - he spent the whole 30 minute session putting his face, and then his head in the water - on his own! And he was clearly not enjoying it - the look on his face each time was priceless! But he was determined to do this, for whatever reason. Now on the third lesson, it seems easier for him and he's actually floating on his front and made it across the (small kiddie) pool with hands out front and kicking his feet.

Now if I can only convince him to wear his goggles....

We were walking the new dog and came across a opossum carcass that was really a flattened rug of fur and bones - only the tail indicated that it had once been a opossum.

DD10 immediately exclaimed:

"I don't think he was playing possum!"

DD12 had to take the new common core exam for our state (called Smarter Balanced, which makes me think of a fake butter product). She'd been doing homeschool brick and mortar classes but then joined an online charter in the latter half of the year. The teacher made an impassioned plea for taking the test so as to avoid penalizing the school. DD won't be attending next year (she gave it a good try, but online is just too isolating for her) but we appreciate what the school offers, so she agreed to take it.

The teacher made it clear that they didn't expect anyone to pass, that it was testing the test more than the students, that the students would not have had a chance to learn the new material to go with the test... and, that she'd sat through the test with a student who required accommodation and many of the questions, particularly in math, didn't make any sense to her either... but please try your best.

I find this highly ethically questionable, but the affront to logic for DD was just too much. "So I'm supposed to try my best, even thought it doesn't count and they don't expect me to do well and a lot of the questions won't make sense?"

So we picked her up:
"How was the test?"
"OK, some of the math questions were really confusing... also, I was supposed to write a fiction story for language arts, but I didn't want to so I wrote a letter to the district telling them how much they suck instead."
"Er... well, I hope you used correct punctuation and grammar."

One completely unexpected and unintended side effect from homeschooling is that DD is completely over the bureaucracy and politics of public schooling. She's just not buying what they're selling.

Ivy, that's a hoot! Glad your daughter can see through the BS and still have a good sense of humour about it.

DS3.5's existential phase continues. Today he was talking to me about how nothing is really something because, if we can conceptualize something, it must exist in some way as embodied through us. He seems nonplussed by the concept of absolute nothingness and seems to be doing experiments to compare relative and absolute nothing.

These thought experiments take some interesting and disturbing turns, but my impression is that he is testing the placement of various scenarios along a shock/horror continuum. When he is emotionally overloaded or is quite displeased that he isn't getting his way, he often talks about death (usually his own because, as he reasons, if he didn't exist, his current suffering also wouldn't exist.) Today he seemed particularly pleased to have come up with what he thinks is the ultimate bad scenario for me: me being forced to kill him, then being required to live a time in his absence with my guilt, followed by my own death. Thankfully we were at home when DS, displeased at not getting his way, loudly compelled me to kill him repeatedly, complete with brief pauses in pathos to check my reaction. My dispassionate, "No, I'm not going to kill you or allow myself to be killed," would probably have been met by raised eyebrows in public.

DS is not a child for faint-hearted parents, and I would be terribly unfulfilled with a less, shall we say, experimental child. Life is always interesting here.

My son's version of this (when younger): if you HAD to kill either me or DD, who would you choose? He would insist I answer--but I don't think my answers were ever very satisfying.

Yes, thankful these were private conversations.