I think that MoN's experience and advice (just above, especially) is one to bear in mind.
After DD had a SINGLE traumatizing experience in a "water babies" class my DD refused swim lessons for MANY years.
This is something of a long story, but the instructors pressured ME to do things that I knew that my 14mo DD was uncomfortable with and terrified by... and I relented when they assured me that "they all scream like that" and that it would be "fine" and she just needed to kind of, I don't know... move through (?) the 'terror' phase of things?
I can still remember arguing with the instructors and being APPALLED that one of them
shoved DD's head under the water. I can still recall her wounded, betrayed look directed at ME. She remembered, too-- the next class, she PUMMELED me and refused to allow me to even take her into the pool. She turned into 19 pounds of squirming, scratching, frantic and determined baby. This was repeated at regular intervals until she was about four-- she didn't want ANY person near her if she was even in a
wading pool in the back yard. For her to get into the water, you had to be about twenty feet away from her.
Anyway-- my point is this-- there is a danger in pushing HG+ kids because of their prodigious memories and way of processing the world. My DD did NOT "get over" it the way a typical child might have. I certainly saw that the other children in the class seemed to recover from their dunkings... but my child was
terrified of drowning. Yes-- at 14mo. I knew that she wasn't just afraid of the unfamiliar sensation, but of the DANGER that she could see the environment presented.
We didn't put her back into lessons until she was five, nearly six. Even so, we put her in semi-private lessons with an instructor much like MoN. We were VERY choosy about instructors-- DD had to truly trust the person or she wouldn't even get in the pool, and that lasted until she was swimming at competitive levels when she was 8-9yo.
I did learn something important about my daughter from this incident, though-- pushing her when she is
terrified is a losing proposition. Find out WHAT she is afraid of first, and reason with her. If she can't be reasoned with, think carefully about whether or not this is really your hill to die on, so to speak. For a blood draw when she was two-- yeah, it was worth it. For a chest x-ray at 18mo, similarly-- had to be done. But swimming? Nah. Our lifestyle didn't make that one completely imperative.
