Somewhere Between Childhood and Puberty, Something Changes

A reflection from a swimming class.

Photo by Mieke Campbell on Unsplash

For the past few weeks, I have been spending my evenings at a swimming pool while my children attend their swimming classes.

The children are divided into two groups: below ten years old and above ten years old.

At first, I was simply passing the time. Then I started noticing something.

The younger girls fascinated me. They arrive at the pool full of excitement. They laugh loudly, help each other, and seem eager to learn. When the coach asks them to jump into the water, most of them don’t spend much time thinking. They just jump. Some do it perfectly. Some don’t. But none of that seems to matter to them.

They are not worried about looking foolish. They are not calculating their chances of success. They are not wondering what others might think.

They are simply busy learning.

A few feet away, the older group tells a different story.

Photo by Husam Yaghi on Unsplash

Many of the girls enter the water more cautiously. Some hesitate before trying a new skill. Some hold the coach’s hand tightly and don’t want to let go. I have even seen a few girls leave the classes after only two or three days.

Maybe they had their own reasons. But every time it happened, I wondered if they had decided too quickly that swimming was not for them.

As I watched these two groups, I found myself thinking about my own childhood.

I was once like those younger girls. I don’t remember being afraid to try things.

I don’t remember constantly asking myself whether I was good enough. If something looked interesting, I wanted to learn it.

If someone else could do it, I believed I could learn it too.

Then somewhere along the way, things changed. Puberty arrived. My body changed, but so did my confidence. I became more self-conscious. I started comparing myself with others. I became more aware of what people thought of me. Without realizing it, I started replacing curiosity with caution.

Maybe that’s why the difference between the two groups felt so familiar.

I wasn’t just watching girls learn to swim.

I was watching the journey from confidence to self-consciousness. The younger girls were not necessarily better swimmers.

They were simply less afraid.

As I watched those little girls jumping into the water, laughing, failing, and trying again, I felt both happy and sad. Happy because they were fearless. Sad because I knew many of them would not stay that way. The swimming class ended, the children went home, and the pool became quiet again. But one thought stayed with me. I hope those little girls hold on to their confidence longer than I did.