"AU" some Swimmers: The Role of OT in Swim Lessons for Kids with Autism (podcast)

Being a collegiate swimmer and have been swimming my whole life, I think knowing how to swim is one of the most important skills you can learn how to do. I have been a lifeguard and have taught swim lessons to many children throughout the years and I have really enjoyed it.  Something that Kim Persons said that really stood out to me in the podcast is that drowning is one of the leading causes of death of children with Autism. Kim Persons and Nick Murray worked with lifeguards to educate them more about children with autism and sensory processing disorder. Sometimes teaching children how to swim can be really difficult, but if you are working with a child on the spectrum and you are not educated about ASD it can be even more difficult for not only you, but the child as well. There is so much that you need to think about when teaching a child how to swim. You need to think about their abilities, how cold/warm the water is, if anyone else is in the water, what they enjoy and do not enjoy doing in the water and how they are progressing. You have a goal in mind which is to teach them how to independently swim, but you also need to make it fun. Not understanding ASD and how to work with children on the spectrum can cause the instructor and swimmer to not have fun during the lesson, bring tension into the lesson that does not need to be there and no progress could be made.
Since I have wanted to become an OT, I have been thinking of ways to merge both my love for swimming and my love of OT together. It was very interesting to listen to this podcast and see how Nick also merged swimming and OT together. Lifeguards/swim instructors need to be comfortable with everyone they work with and they need to be creative in getting the swimmer to do what they want them to do in the water. In is this case, educating the lifeguards/instructors was the first step. They had reports on each child and what they were working towards in the lessons, what triggers they had, their self-stimming, what they liked and didn't like to do in the water and their progression. This allowed for smooth transitions between instructors and swimmers when the original instructor was out. This was very important because you start to develop a connection with the child you are teaching and if a new instructor jumps in to cover you and doesn't understand the needs of that child, the lesson will go no where.
I loved listening to this podcast and learning how you can bring OT services into the water. I hope that on my OT journey I will be able to use my OT and swimming knowledge to better serve my community. 

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