From Zero to Swimming

On rigidity, determination and teaching a monotropic mind to swim

We were staying at a resort in central Oregon, watching our older child fearlessly tackle the waterslide while our youngest splashed in the shallow end. Meanwhile, my middle son Liam stood at the pool's edge, fully armored in a lifejacket, sunglasses, sunhat, and a thick layer of mineral sunscreen. The water barely touched his ankles.

"Come on in!" I called.

"I am in," he replied matter-of-factly.

What might seem like rigidity or stubbornness to others was, for Liam, a precise and rational assessment of risk. His monotropic mind, when focused on swimming, couldn't help but see and process every detail – including the dangers. The possibility of not being able to breathe, of inhaling water, of panicking underwater – these weren't abstract concepts but vivid, specific scenarios his mind had mapped out. His reasoning was both logical and unshakeable: "When you're in the water, you can't breathe, and if you can't breathe, you can't get oxygen, and if you can't get oxygen you will die." Hard to argue with that.

My husband Eric, growing impatient with our gentle approach, tried a different tactic. "Liam," he proposed, "if you take off your life jacket and swim across the pool, I'll buy you that $300 Lego tow truck you've been wanting. The one with the working gears." I shot Eric a stern look – bribery wasn't my preferred teaching method.

An hour later, as we relaxed poolside, Liam approached. His lifejacket was conspicuously absent, and he clutched his brother's full-face snorkel mask. "I'm ready to swim across the pool," he declared. His voice was steady, determined, and notably absent of fear.

The water in this section was 5 feet deep, and he would need to swim about 30 feet. He would be within arm's reach of the wall, but still – this was a huge step for a child who moments ago wouldn't venture past his ankles. Liam put on his snorkel mask, climbed into the pool, and without hesitation pushed off the wall.

To our amazement, he swam with relative ease all the way across. When he got out on the other side, his expression remained serious. Fixing his dad with a no-nonsense look, he stated simply: "Now buy me the tow truck." Then he went back to our chairs and put his lifejacket back on.

This moment demonstrated a pattern we'd seen before in Liam's development. Just like with learning to talk – where he went from near silence to perfect sentences overnight – or learning to read, where he suddenly picked up a difficult book and dove in, Liam approached swimming in the same binary way. His progress didn't follow the gradual progression we expect in childhood development. Instead, it was marked by long periods where he appeared uninterested or unable, followed by sudden, dramatic leaps forward.

The same pattern emerged with bike riding: months of complete refusal followed by one afternoon where he simply got on and rode straight down a grassy, bumpy hill, offroad style. What others might see as rigidity was actually determination – the same unwavering focus that made him initially resist could also drive him to master new skills with remarkable speed and thoroughness. In each case, once he decided he was ready, the previous fears or limitations seemed to vanish entirely, replaced by newfound capability. Sometimes the catalyst was a Lego set, other times it was simply that mysterious moment when his monotropic mind decided it was time.

When the Lego tow truck arrived, it marked more than just a reward – it signaled another of these developmental leaps. The fear of water that had seemed so insurmountable just days before had switched off completely, opening the door to a new skill mastered in his own unique way and time. His determination, that same force that had made him so adamantly resist swimming, had transformed into the power that helped him conquer it.