"Au-Some Swimmers" Podcast Thoughts


The podcast I chose to listen to was the “Au-Some Swimmers” one from the Glass Half Full podcast series. The reason I chose this one is because of a class I took during my undergraduate studies called “Adapted Physical Education.” It was a class where we always had kids from our branch of The Arc (The Arc of the Ozarks) come to our campus and we would work on helping them participate in different kinds of physical activities. Two of these days during class, we got to take the kids into the pool on our campus and help them around and ensure they were having fun and being safe. Many of these kids were on the autism spectrum and knowing some of these tips may have helped integrate them into the pool better or given them a better experience overall.

The story that Nick Murray told during the podcast about a boy who was afraid to get his head wet reminded me a little bit of a boy I worked with in my class. The boy in Murray’s story was able to come around to getting his head wet once he was able to pour water on the lifeguard’s head and see that it was not as scary or uncomfortable as he might have thought. The boy in my class did not seem to like the water very much either and would only get in it about waist-high and only for short periods of time. Murray’s story made me think that maybe if we had tried to think outside of the box a bit more and let him be more in control of the situation, he may have come around and been more open to being in the water.

Another thing that stuck out to me is how important it can be for a child or someone who is on the autism spectrum to have some kind of journal or even a schedule. Murray and his group worked with the lifeguards who taught the children swim lessons to come up with a journal for each student they were teaching. It helped the lifeguards to know what supports and barriers each child had regardless of if they had worked with that same child before or not so that they could try to continue progressing the swim lessons with each child. This podcast was really interesting to listen to for me since I have done something kind of similar in the past and I liked being able to see it more through the scope of occupational therapy than I was able to previously.

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