‘DD5’ and ‘DS7’ – it took me ages to work out what these stood for when I first encountered parent pages. I struggle to use the term (DS5 stands for Darling Son aged 5) not because David isn’t the most precious thing in the whole world but because to me it sounds really insincere! I know it’s just a convention but I am tempted to put S5 on a site and see if anyone asks me why he isn’t my ‘darling’ son.
Anyway, that’s just an aside. I wanted to talk about fear today. There was so much joy and happiness at David’s arrival (having waited so long), but with that came the fear of losing him which can seem all encompassing at times. When you see the news and the horrific happenings to children around the world whether from famines, trafficking or war, I know how lucky we are to live in this country but the fear continues. Strangers who might take him away, a traffic accident that might take him from me, being swept away before he can swim. I could go on and on.
The concept of David choking on a grape at 10 months terrified me. The idea that the grape shape was ideal to get stuck in the throat and cause a vacuum so it couldn’t be removed meant that I didn’t just cut them in half when he was little, I did quarters. I would have done eighths but there wouldn’t have been much left to eat. David has dealt with this example of my paranoia remarkably well and will now come up to me with a grape and bite it in half in front of me just to reassure (bless him).
However, I think I have really messed up with swimming. I wanted David to swim from birth – you read about toddlers who have saved themselves by hanging on to the edge of a pool just like they did in baby swimming classes. So that’s what we did. We did swimming classes together until he was a year old. It was going well even if I had to appear in public in a swimsuit, but then the fabulous days of maternity leave ended and so did the swimming. I tried again when he was 3 and I found a weekend class and I think that’s when my paranoia really affected him. I was so scared of him getting complacent beside a pool or pond because he thought he could swim that I would talk about how he could drown. He took it to heart. Move on two years and he won’t take his feet off the floor, won’t lean back in the water and never puts his chin in. Group swimming lessons were going nowhere, and I still have the fear that he’s going to drown and it will all be my fault because I was afraid he was going to drown!! I am sure there are many more ways I am going to impact on his psyche as he grows up. I’m just hoping they will mostly be positive.
However, there is hope at the end of the swimming tunnel! He has now had six 1:1 swimming lessons and last week lay on his back and kicked his feet. Also, I’m spending all our money on private swimming lessons so there won’t be any holidays for a while so no worries about the pool.