If you haven’t already been introduced to my family, you can catch up here.
Ryan always loved the water, even as a toddler. He loved being at a pool or at the beach. He grew up having a pool at his grandparents house which was great. He loved the splash pad at the park and we would get little pools or blow up slides for the back yard.
As he got older he became more and more obsessed with swimming. He always wanted to go to the pool, which of course wasn’t easy to explain why we can’t in the winter time. He started swimming at school and calls Fridays “school bus swimming” and counts down the sleeps to when it is.
He goes to public swims as much as we can and joins Autism swimming lessons when they are available. Each summer he became better and better at swimming. His favorite thing is to go under the water and push himself down.
He has jumped into his grandparents pool in his clothes, not wanting to wait until he was in his bathing suit. If he was there visiting, they have to make sure to lock all of the doors so he couldn’t get out to go jump in.
Keeping him out of the water when it’s not time to go swimming has been an ongoing challenge.
He goes on trail walks at school and on one walk, he jumped right into a shallow body of water and had to walk back to school soaked. He will do it without warning even when he knows he is not allowed or shouldn’t.
Ryan used to go for walks at our waterfront with daddy. He likes to stand on the wharf or boardwalk area and drop rocks into the water and listen to the splash. Every time we are there, we have to hold his hand and keep repeating “no jumping into the water.”
Last summer, I decided to take him for a walk at the waterfront and to throw rocks. We were standing on the upper boardwalk area. On one side is a boat launch ramp and on the other is a ladder to climb down to a small floating dock for boats. Depending on the tide, the drop is significant & the water is deep.
We were collecting rocks and throwing them and he would point to the water and say “We don’t jump in the water” and I just kept repeating “that’s right, we don’t jump in.”
I stood on the edge area and made sure he was on the ground part, collecting rocks and when he’d go over to drop them, I’d hold his hand. At one point, as I stood watching him collect rocks, I went to grab his hand and he took off running and launched himself off the end of the dock and into the water!
It was so fast.
I screamed his name. I had no idea if he hit the floating dock below or landed into the water. I ran over to the edge and there he was, swimming over to the dock, his hat now floating away.
He got to the dock and was yelling “help me!” because he couldn’t lift himself onto it.
I had to climb down the ladder and lift him up onto it, move him to the ladder to climb back to the boardwalk. I was so scared he would jump back into the water as I climbed up behind him. I had to take all his wet clothes off, wrap him in a blanket and drive him home like that.
It scared me so much. I was so thankful he hadn’t hurt himself and have never taken him back there and will not until he understands he cannot do that again.
Last summer, we went on one of our yearly trips to PEI. We were having fun at the amusement park with my parents, my sister and nephew. Everyone was having fun on the various rides including the bumper boats. I wanted to take Ryan on them because I knew he would love it.
People were already all in the boats, so I ran up with Ryan to quickly get on and as we got up to the front he got free of my hand, took off running, jumped completely over the boats with people in them and into the pool of water!
Everyone was shocked. Not something you see everyday I would imagine.
Scared, I screamed his name again. I ran over and yelled for him to swim over to the side so I could lift him out.
I was embarrassed, because everyone was watching. They didn’t know anything about him so were most likely thinking wow what a brat.
We got him out and had to change him of course. Needless to say, we avoided that ride for the rest of our time at the park.
Just another day in the life of being Ryan’s mom. Never a dull moment.
When I say he will jump into any area of water he can, he definitely will. He tries to talk himself out of it by repeating it and knows he shouldn’t unless we are swimming or at the beach but it’s almost as if he just can’t resist or help himself.
He has a need and needs to fulfill it.
I did some research and read that being under the water with pressure around you can be very calming to kids with autism. Which makes total sense. He finds comfort and ease when he is in the water and it’s his happy place where he can be relaxed and feel a sense of joy and freedom.
