North County Aquatic Center

Today we expanded our swimming pool horizons a bit and decided to go to Sebastian and check out their community pool. Here's the description from their web page:

The North County Aquatic Center is a family oriented public pool. The pool is heated and open year round. We feature an activity pool, a competition pool, with a diving well and changing facilities. Our activity pool is zero depth for easy entry for all ages. The activity pool has slides, water cannons, bubblers, a water tree and a huge water play structure. The competition pool has almost 1million gallons of water. We have up to 24 lanes for lap swimming at 25 yards. Our diving well has one meter and three meter diving boards.

What caught our eye the most was the zero depth activity pool. Our pool is 3'-6" at the shallow end, so Andrew cannot touch the bottom. We wanted to go to a pool where he could have fun playing and moving about without worrying about swimming all the time.

Another interesting item was the slides. The rules said that you must be 42 inches tall to ride the slide. Andrew is 42 inches tall. Even so, we figured he was not a good enough swimmer to try it and you must go by yourself.

We arrived just after the pool opened and went straight for the activity pool. The play structure was great. It had big wheels that kids could turn to open and close valves and control the flow of water through various pipes. It had a tunnel to crawl through with a waterfall at one end. And it had a small slide that ended in about a foot of water. Andrew played in that area for several hours. I had to venture off to the larger pool and try the diving board. I don't remember the last time I dove from a diving board - there were not a lot of swimming opportunities in Seattle.

Around 4:00 - an hour before closing - Andrew started taking notice of the twin slides. Most of the crowd had left for the day and the line was very short. We noticed several kids smaller than Andrew were now going down the slide. He built up his courage and Susan took him to the top. After a few seconds of standing at the head of the slide, he turned away in tears. I heard him say something like, "I never want to go down the slide." He tends to blurt out extreme measures when he gets upset. From my flight instructor training, I believe that is a defense mechanism called reaction formation. I looked at Susan, then at the clock, and told her that I bet he'd want to try the slide again in less than 10 minutes. Sure enough, he did. This time, I went up, too, and got the slide next to him. With as much courage as he could muster, Andrew went down the slide. I went at the same time and met him at the bottom to help him cross from the 4 foot zone back to the 3 foot zone. For the next 50 minutes, Andrew made the circuit from the pool to the slide over and over again.

On the way out, I heard Andrew say, "Next time, let's get here earlier so we can stay longer." I guess four and a half hours of pool time isn't enough for a 5 year old.