Luke Harris, a student at the SafeSplash Swim School in Bellevue, WA, tells his story about learning to swim at the age of fourteen years old.

Being a teen who can’t swim is tough.  It’s extremely embarrassing to have to make up excuses to avoid hanging out with friends at the community pool just to avoid having to explain you can’t swim. Before I finally learned to swim, I was anxious about bringing up topics that might trigger the dreaded question “Can you swim?” Of course, whenever this question did come around, I would always just say yes, as I didn’t want to make the situation awkward or feel that embarrassment. Who would? Eventually, I was tired of feeling inferior to my friends. I mustered up the courage and decided I was going to learn to swim!

Being an instructor at SafeSplash we know that a healthy body and mind are key to success! When I'm not training my body you can find me with my nose in a book. There are so many books that I will be reading throughout the year. I have the goal of reading 150 books by the end of the year and so far I’m at 50. Here are the next top five on my to-do list!

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21^st century children have the opportunity to be exposed to an endless list of activities, considering there is such a wide range of choices available, it is hard to decide what to try. Parents worry their children are in too many activities or not the right activity. As a mom of three teenagers, we have tried many activities over the years. There have been times when I have wondered “why did we spend time playing that sport or taking those lessons?” However, I quickly learned that even the activities that don’t work have given us a good sense of what our kids like, what they don’t like, or hopefully led them to a skill they truly love. My oldest daughter played soccer from age 4 -10.  She enjoyed playing, but it really wasn’t her thing, looking back, keeping her in soccer was the best thing we could have ever done.