Aquaphobia

For Tres, aquaphobia started early.

At 18 months old, he found himself face down in about 3 feet of water. I had taken all 3 of my kids at the time to a public indoor pool in the dead of winter by myself. That head-shaking decision alone is worthy of another droll blog post.

One moment he was sitting next to me safely on the side of the pool. The next, he was in it.

He was only submerged for a few seconds, but I believe it has taken a year for each of those eternal seconds that he was under for him to recover.

As time passed, we started to realize the aquaphobia was quite real when he refused to bathe. He simply would not get his head wet. For any reason. The mere mention of a shower would elicit shrieks.

Summer vacations were a bit of a drag for him. Most of them surrounded swimming or various water activities, and despite many attempts at easing him back in, he contented himself by loitering at the edges and playing by himself.

One year at the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I forced him into the outdoor shower with me to rinse the caked sand from his body. My extended family still describes the screams that drifted upwards into the living area from the first floor of our beach house with wonder.

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It all came to head a year ago. We had returned to the ocean for yet another week of fun and blistering temperatures, complete with loads of beach equipment, umbrellas and toys. We employed our refined tactics to once again try to cajole Tres into the water. Not much ground was gained, if any.

Tres in his infamous Spiderman body swimming suit. This rare dip in the hot tub was the pinnacle of his water activities for the entire week at the ocean.

At one point on the last day, I grabbed him and physically carried him out with me into the waist-deep waves, wearing his full-body Spiderman swimming suit — complete with flotation devices inserted into every possible crevice to try to assuage his fears.

Let's just say the entire population of Duck, NC stopped to observe. As the cries and erratic moans echoed up and down the shore, I realized the optics of this attempt were not good. I got several looks from strangers ranging from disbelief to pity.

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This past fall, we enrolled our three oldest, reluctantly including Tres, in swimming lessons. As fate would have it, we returned to the exact same pool where the unfortunate incident had occurred several years prior.

What ensued may well be the first instance of swimming lessons where the participant emphatically refused to even enter the water.

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And then, after years of attempts, the breakthrough happened. My wife and I had slowly given up on the effort to immerse Tres in the rewarding activity of actually getting wet. And, as it happens so often with kids, that is when progress really began.

Out of nowhere, Tres began to jump into the water. In a matter of a week, he was doggy-paddling himself around in areas he could not touch. He started giving himself showers, and shampooing his head - himself.

Today, he is back in swimming lessons for a second time—and loving every minute of it. The aquaphobia is finally gone - but the memories and stories will last forever.