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Friday, September 03, 2021

Daring Divers

Last week Benjamin figured out how to dive from the diving board; this week Miriam and Zoë figured out how to dive from the diving board. So the kids thought it would be great to redo their sequential diving act. You know, now that they all know how to dive!

It didn't go off as they planned, however, because Benjamin developed a little case of the yips

He could go off the side of the pool, no problem...

But when it came time to go off the diving board, he just couldn't.


The girls found this to be rather frustrating because they felt like Benjamin was holding up the project. Benjamin was frustrated because he couldn't manage to do it (and everyone was getting frustrated with him). Alexander was frustrated because he wanted me to return to the shallow end with him. 

In the end we told Benjamin not to worry about it; the yips are temporary. I reminded him that even Olympic athletes have days where they just...get psyched out, like Pamela Ware: 


And he remembered having read an article about Simone Biles in a recent Week Junior magazine, so that made him feel better, too. He knew it was alright to take a break, give diving a rest for a little while, stop beating himself up about it, and pick it up again another day. 

And Zoë, of course, had to be reminded to stop talking about how much better she was at diving than Benjamin is (because they're both doing fine; she was simply having a good day and he was having a hard day). But it's really pretty cool how fast she decided she could dive off the diving board after she learned how to dive from the side of the pool.


Here's one more video of Miriam and Zoë doing a little diving:

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