What would you have wanted your swim instructor to know....

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If I where a swim instructor teaching autistic kids. The first thing I would teach them is to "Free dive", why? Because once you get over the fear of putting your head underwater. Swimming underwater (at least for me anyways.) is one of the most relaxing thing I can do, Especially if you have sensory issues like with touching and sounds. Once you reach neutral buoyancy. it's like floating in space. I became Peter Pan and the water becomes Never land. Once your underwater. Swimming become a whole lot easier to do because It take a lot less energy to move around when you're buoyant and because you're holding your breath. It teaches you to to relax and not fight the water and the more you relax. The longer you can hold your breath.

I took swimming classes for several years and I don't think I needed anything to be different for me because of my aspergers. I had fun, learned to swim, and still love to swim. I had trouble with diving and only ever dived headfirst from the diving board once, and I never mastered the butterfly stroke, but that's all. The first is out of fear (irrational fear, so I have no explanation as to why I don't like diving), and the second is just that I never got the skill. I'm not particularly athletic and the butterfly stroke is difficult.

In the first class I took the first thing we did was to blow bubbles, and I think it was pretty close to that when we put our heads underwater. For children at the age I was at (it is a vague memory so I can't be specific, but probably 3-4) diving would have been to advanced, I think. I love being underwater, but I can't dive.