I learned something today. Actually, I just relearned something I’ve learned every Memorial Day weekend since becoming a mother: I fucking hate the pool.
It’s not as simple as the fact that donning a swimsuit makes me want to crawl in the fetal position and stay there until September. It’s not the fact that I glare at carefree, bikini-clad teenagers burning them with my eyes. It’s not even the communal germ fest of wet, hot bodies bathing in piss-filled water or the notion that I’m exposing my children to the sun’s cancer causing rays. No, it’s just the fact that I am a complete nervous wreck each and every time we go.
I’m not normally such an intense mother, but when I’m at the pool I morph into secret agent mode. My sole mission? To keep my three children alive. I scan the pool looking for obstacles that pose potential tripping hazards. I annoyingly holler their names should I lose sight of them for the briefest moment. I barely smile, let alone engage in conversation that would require me to take my eyes off of any of them. I gladly give into ice cream and popsicle requests as long as it brings us out of the water and secretly pray for sudden thunderstorms the entire time we’re there. It’s just all way too stressful for me.
Am I alone here? Because poolside, it certainly feels like I am. Everyone else looks like they’re having the time of their lives, while I’m sure I look like a constipated wreck. I see mothers casually flip through magazines or chatting with each other. I actually saw a mother of young children reading a novel poolside. How is that even possible? I just don’t get it.
I do, however, totally get ignoring my children while in the comfort of our own home. I’m really good at that. You know, lest you think I’m always so attentive.
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HATE the pool. Loathe. I thought I was alone in praying for thunderstorms. I’m not social. I’m not cool. I’m a wreck. I’m hot. I’m cursing the extra cookie (or 3) I consumed the night before. I radiate anxiety. Good times!
Stopped by from SITS. Congrats on your day – Loving your blog…
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which is why we got a swimming pool (albeit a small, above ground one) for at home. I can don my bathing suit in the privacy of my backyard, I can sit and watch them play in the water, remove the ladder to the pool when I don’t want them in there and the fridge and freezer is just chock block full of cool drinks and snacks so I’m saving money that way too.
I took my kids to the waterpark and didn’t feel like I could relax at all. I was amazed at those parents with children around the same age of my own would sit and read a book. How could you possible not worry about them leaving the area? I felt like a heel just because I was looking at one of the other kids when J fell down and scraped her leg and I missed it.
Yeah..I just like to stay home!
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You need to find a smaller, less crowded pool.
We go to a free city wading pool that’s only open during the week. The water isn’t chlorinated, which is fine by me, because chlorine dries me out, but it’s fresh water because they drain it daily and fill it with fresh water daily. The older kids mostly stay away because it’s to shallow for them, and the skinny teenager stay away because there are no boys to impress and no snack bar. And I do take a book or magazine, don’t always read it, but it seems like all the moms watch all the kids. My daughter tripped and fell and skinned her knees today and started wailing and 2 other moms got to her before I did.
Now, the beach…I love the beach, but since my son (almost 6) decided last summer that he likes to get in the water, and then won’t get OUT, I don’t touch the book. Last year, I got one of the worst sunburns of my life because he wouldn’t get out of the waves long enough for me to reapply sunscreen and I had to wait until another adult showed up to give me a chance.
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You are not alone. I am a lunatic when my kids are in the water. My son is a pretty fair swimmer after three summers of lessons. My daughter is a total boat anchor. I live in Florida and we get “child drowned in pool” headlines on a pretty regular basis. I’ve had to jump in on two occasions to get them out of a scary situation. Too many parents take water safety way too lightly. We recently had news of a two year old who drowned at a resort. The parents LEFT him in the baby pool and went swimming in the main pool with their older children. He toddled over to the hot tub, fell in and drowned. Amazing!
Love this blog as I feel the exact same way! Reading about little babies and children drowning doesn’t help but I cannot help myself!
My 3 children are grown now. Thanks to me!! lol I was the same way. Eyes always peeled, stomache in my throat! I never trusted those young lifeguards at all! At the fair, I was almost hysterical over a ride my son was on. I was sure he was going to be flung to his death!! My MIL kindly told me I needed to relax, I was pissed. My now Ex-husband was stupid enough to by our 9 yar old boy a Honda XR 100 when the boy barely wieghed 50 pounds. (I did not even let him ride his bicycle on our country road without my eagle eye and my presence there!) Fortunately I always ‘forgot’ to by gas for the dirt bike. For 8 years, until weeks before he left for Navy basic training, then I felt guilty that I had not let him ride it..
When we took trips to the Gulf of Mexico to visit my daughter who was stationed in the Navy there. Mind you, she was in the Navy, on her own for 2 years at this point. She and my son would venture into the water. PANIC mode for mommy! “Get back here closer to the shore!” “You will be swept away by a rip current!” “OMG!!” Yea. I was a mess. Now I live near the Gulf and have been in it myself. I now realize that it is shallow…Not that scary at all. My kids laugh at me now. (And I laugh about myself).
I still get hysterical about wordly dangers and my children, guess it is a Mommy thing!
@ Sherri – You know what though? You’ll never know how much your vigilance played a part in their safety. Maybe nothing bad ever happened to them but just knowing you were watching probably kept them from more risky behavior. As for when they are little … We just had headlines of two 2 years olds drowned in the backyard pool. This lady was watching her own and a friend’s little boy and left them out by the pool while she went inside to do something “for just 5 minutes”. Came back and they were drowned. Being hyper-vigilant when kids are around water is nothing to be ashamed of.
I’m new to your blog and am just now reading this but I wanted to let you know I am the exact same way when I take my kids to the pool!!! I really thought I was the only one on earth that felt this way!! I am an uptight nervous wreck the whole time, waiting for my kids heads to go under and not come up. If I lose sight of one of them, my heart starts racing and I am in panic mode! Thank you for making me feel like I’m not such a freak!!
Love your Blog!!
I can totally relate. I used to be just like that when my kids were young and not too adept at swimming. I even had a lifeguard at the pool compliment my attentiveness–it was the baby pool. The thought of leaving the lives of my little ones to a high-school-aged lifeguard scared the crap out of me. Now that they’re older (much) had have years of swimming lessons and swim team practice I can relax (and be one of those chatty/reading moms). You’ll get there one day. But, the lake and ocean? Still a wreck about those.
I too hate the pool. I allow my daughter 9 weeks of swim lessons each summer and I refuse to go to the pool any more than that. I hate all the stuff on the ground around the pool. I hate the showers and bathroom floors. I hate the two mothers with 10 kids between them who sit under the “no food or drink” sign and spread out an array of chips, fruit gummies and PB & J sandwichs and then ignore their kids while one is floating gummies in the kiddy pool and the snot faced two year old covered in peanut butter is grossing out my child. Thank God it’s over for the summer!
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I too hate swimming, but I would ask you to persevere, especially with swimmimg and life-saving lessons.
We took our daughter to lessons from about 6 months, and she loved it. She is now 20 and drives herself to swimming and keeps fit doing 50 lengths at a time!
I love the pool! My kids love the pool! I don’t ever remember not being able to swim, and my kids won’t either! That said I do watch them, and I hate parents who don’t because I know how well the lifeguard is watching them, I WAS that lifeguard, which is to say….they’re really not.
It’s even WORSE when you’ve been trained as a lifeguard and swim instructor. The beach is really hard for me to relax at and most pools are the same way. Instead of just watching my own kid, I’m watching everyone else’s too.
My sister jumped in the pool one day knocking our cousin who was in the pool on conscious. She came up floating, thank God the lifeguard saw her right away. He pulled her out and started CPR that shit was scary.
My sisters and I all have taught swim lessons and lifeguarded. I learned two things. It takes 3 full seconds before a child is actually drowning. 3 seconds is actually a long time. so sitting on deck watching your kids gives you plenty of time to get there. And two, starring straight at your kid is more ineffective than watching them dead on. Lifeguards use periferal vision to guard. I’ve saved two kids from the deck and multiple while in the pool. always, It happens because I see it out the corner of my eye.
Currently, a mom and a swim instructor, the two most effective things you can teach your kids are to backfloat and to roll onto their back. We teach our kids to roll front to back and also to jump in(simulated falling) and get to their back. Once their mouth is out of the water, they are pretty much out of danger.
The pool.. Not somewhere I like to frequent, in fact, I’ve been once since I had my son, and I donned an outfit that wouldn’t show a centimeter of baby marked skin. During that time, I threw my mother in the pool with him, and watched like a hawk over them wading in the children’s pool that is so shallow a fly wouldn’t drown in it, next thing you know, I see something brown floating in the water, I scream thinking my baby is going to die from some sort of water-borne disease. I still remember yelling to the attendant “call some sort of authorities!”
Let’s just say, the looks I got from fellow parents and swimmers were not uncalled for, the dramatic mother making a mountain out of a mole hill, waving her arms like a possessed being, yelling “get him out! Get him out!” Never the less, this psychotic queen is not going back to that pool.
Filthy little bastards.
Last summer, when my daughter was 10, was the first time I felt comfortable enough at the pool to actually read a novel. Now I have a baby and it starts all over again. 10 more years of swimming pool anxiety.
Hi, Saw you on Oprah video as commercial. Looks like fun. anyways, I go through this every year with my children, mom we want to go to the pool. My hubby usually takes them. Since having children I have about 40 extra pounds on me so donning a swimsuit makes me hurl, I can’t even buy a pair of jeans that fit me correctly let alone a swimsuit. I am a bunch of nerves myself and I get on my own nerves. Don’t do this don’t do that. I look at some of the moms reading a romance novel and their kids are tossing balls around in the pool (while their not paying attention to them), my problem is I pay too much attention and can’t relax, pools are supposed to be for relaxing right? Ugh, not for me I tell ya. Amen to your rant, I’m right there with you!!
sounds like you need a xanax
Yeah, I deprive my children of the pool because it literally makes me insane. I have 6 kids ages 8, 6, 5, 3, 1 and 4 months. None know how to swim. My oldest has ASD and ODD and a bunch of other related issues. My 2nd oldest has verbal apraxia and my 3rd oldest has encopresis. The oldest has been terrified of water since he was born and won’t even begin to learn to swim. We just don’t do pools. We don’t do the beach (and we live in Jax, FL – the beach is really the only thing entertaining for families here). Instead, we pack up and head to Disney once a month. Yes, I find Disney a trillion times less stressful than the beach or pool. My husband and I would have to each be holding 3 people in the pool each. Our kids are short and none can reach the bottom and have their head above water, even in the shallow end. So no thanks. Yes, we live in FL and people think we spend every day out at the pool working on our tans and having fun. But no, we despise the pool.
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