The end of New Zealand Summer {or the seamless transition to Autumn as has been the case this Summer-less year!} always brings with it March, and in March comes school Swimming Sports.
Despite Ethan’s obvious enjoyment of swimming, his natural awesome swimming ability and the approximately 350 swimming lessons he has attended in his life, swimming sports stresses him out. When I say stresses him out I mean massive performance anxiety, tears before bedtime and multiple discussions about how ‘dumb and stupid’ such events are. Did I mention that this started at least three weeks before swimming sports was scheduled? Oh, the best part was due to the impending doom of the ‘Weather Bomb”, we arrived at school on Thursday ready for action and discovered the action had actually been postponed for 3 days. I died. 3 more days.
To stop this long post from getting even longer, E raced yesterday, he won every race he was in, convincingly, and I have a sneaky suspicion he felt quietly confident the whole time. So why did he make us live through this drama for the last few weeks? Perhaps he is just one of those people {like myself} that needs to feel the pressure to really perform. Perhaps nerves and anxiety are what ensures he gets the results he wants. Interestingly enough, he never performs this way when he is competing in his team sports. It seems he only creates such expectations when he has to perform on his own.
All I can say is that I am SO glad it’s over and am eyeing the winter cross-country with much resignation!
{E is in the 2nd lane from the bottom}
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