Single Focus: Ideas to Diminish Difficulty with Transitions

[Andrea Salzman]

This is the location for you to lend your ideas. What do you do in the pool to help ease transitions and to incorporate elements of change into the treatment?

You may respond to this posting with your own ideas in any format. You can attach a document (see below) or just jot down your ideas at random.

At the end, ARN will create a summary document to distribute.

[Andrea Salzman]

Here are some sample ideas for working transitions/change into your pool time.

Your 2-year old patient is afraid of getting his hair wet and treats every bath-time as his own private hell.
Start your pool session in the locker room. Issue your child a colorful umbrella and then use the hand-held shower to play games such as “rain, rain, go away”. Eventually, he may get so wrapped up in the fun of dashing through the rainstorm that he forgets to use the umbrella. Transition this technique poolside by investing in watering cans and super-soaker water-guns to make it “rain” by the pool.

Your 18-month old patient will sit beside her mother on the pool deck, but she will not leave mom, and she will not come anywhere near the pool.
Place a clean, plastic dishwashing tub full of thermoneutral (approximately 93° F) water next to mom. Put a duck or other colorful floatable into the water. Let the toddler play with her new toy next to mom. A natural moment will come when the child will lean over the tub to get at the toy. Have mom “help” her step into the basin and then to sit in the water to play. Without making it obvious, slide the entire basin over to poolside -- and right over the edge! Now, your toddler is sitting in her own miniature pool inside a much bigger pool. And it happened with minimum transitional stress.

Your 5-year old patient won’t slide into the water from the pool’s edge and screams when you try to pull him in.
Place a bucket (full of pool water) and an over-sized sponge next to him on the pool deck. Stand in the water immediately “beneath” him and tell him you forgot to take a shower that morning and you are probably a little stinky. Plug your nose, wave under your armpits, ham it up!

Take the sponge and dip it into the water. Give yourself a “shower” by ringing it out over your shoulder (or, if you are feeling especially committed to the process, your head!). After modeling this a few times, see if the little boy won’t take over shower duties. Let him scrub your arms, your back, and your face with the sponge. During this process, it will be almost impossible for him to not splash himself. Now it’s your turn to give him a shower. Once you are both sufficiently “clean” and already wet, the transition into the pool will be opaque.

Your pre-teen patient will not stop romping in the water and she ends up plowing across three lanes of lap swimmers. She refuses to get out of the pool.
Teach her to play the ‘First, Then’ game. Observe what activities she likes to do most in the water (floating, bobbing, swimming while holding her breath underwater, whatever). Tell her “First you need to ____” (inserting the task you want her to practice) “and then you can ___” (inserting the activity she enjoys most). Using rewards is very effective when dealing with children and the “First, Then” game will help her understand concepts of time and task completion.