Getting practice right
Practice is the act of rehearsing a behavior over and over, or engaging in an activity again and again, for the purpose of improving or mastering it
- from wikipedia
When I tried to enroll my daughter in a karate school closer to home and the owner wouldn’t let us pay for one day a week, I was upset but I could see his point. According to him, if once a week is all the karate practice she gets, then she’ll never be great at the sport. We ended up not enrolling for other reasons, but as I consider the slow progress my daughter has been making at swimming, the karate instructor’s words come back to mind.
One thirty minute class per week is just enough to receive the instructions. Additional time needs to be set aside for practice, to put the instructions into action. But there, we’ve been lacking. So I decided to tackle the obstruction to practice head-on.
Major obstruction to practice is that I cannot swim. Therefore, I cannot take her to the pool to swim. Therefore I depend on class schedules for her to get her practice. And paying for additional classes would be well, costlier.
So I hope to come back sometime soon with an update saying how well I can now swim and how my daughter and Baby Brother have become good swimmers due to tons of practice opportunity.
In the meantime, I have to deal with my swim lesson challenges. I had intended to take adult swim classes last summer until I found out that our rec center has no weekday evening classes. Only Saturday classes were available but child care was unavailable during the weekend (a necessity given hubby’s schedule). So I waited till Fall. And evening weekday classes were available but the kids room closed 10 minutes before the class was over. So I decided that come next summer (this one), I would pay for private classes at my (and the kid’s room) convenience.
So far, I’ve had one class. No miracle happened. Today was supposed to be my second class and I was running incredibly late. As soon as I got the kids settled in the kids room, I rushed to change and shower and headed to the pool area where I saw a large crowd. It appeared a competition (swim meet) was taking place in an adjoining pool. My instructor was ready. And so was I. But I looked over at the rows of benches where proud parents were sitting watching their kids in competition, trying to scan the faces and see if I recognized any. I couldn’t because they were too far away but nonetheless, I became alarmed. “I can’t be a side attraction!”
I promised to be back next week, and now I wonder if I’m getting enough practice myself. Wouldn’t it be ironic if I get stuck in the same issue I’m trying to solve?
