Unsupervised

Zachary and Annalise have started taking swim lessons at our local YMCA. We have a three month membership there (purchased at the silent auction at Annalise's school) and are sort of trying it all out. I've had kind of mixed thoughts on the whole thing, but after today, I'm really not so sure.

Zachary's swim lesson goes from 9:35 until 10:05. To get him there, we have to park down the block, load up Juliette in the baby bjorn, go through the turnnstyles, go in through the girls' locker room (I won't bother to explain the very complicated locker room rules), give him a shower, walk him out to the pool, walk out through the girls' locker room, through the turnstyles and around the corner to the observation room. Today their lessons were in the big pool because the training pool was too chilly. At five to 10, the other two parents (there were only three kids today) got up to go get their kids. Since I have to take two other kids with me and there isn't a lot of space to stay and wait, I decided to wait until 10 to make the trek back to the pool. But I saw his teacher giving the kids a high five indicating the end of the lesson, so I hightailed it back down the hall, through the turnstyles, back through the locker room to the pool. And there was Zachary, standing by himself with another woman leaning over him asking him his mommy's name. I came up as he was saying, "Christa." I looked at the clock and it was 10:01. His instructor was onto her next lesson (a private lesson with an adult). I often let things slide, but here is my kid crying because he's ALONE on a POOL DECK and his lesson isn't even over for another four minutes!

So I decided to say something. This is not easy for me! It is not my personality type to stick up for myself and his insructor is easily thirty years older than I am. But it's my kid, and I'm much tougher with them! So I waited for her to come back to the end of the pool and said, "I thought his lesson was over at 10:05?" She looked at the clock and gave me some bs about starting earlier and being in the different pool. I said, "Fine, but couldn't he have waited on the steps of the pool?" After some back and forth, she finally apologized and said it was her fault. It was. I had every right to be upset in this situation. But what if it had been "my fault" and I was late to pick up Zachary? (Every now and then people are late; especially when it takes half a day to get from the observation room out to the pool.) Does her responsibility for him end at 10:05? Is it then OK for her to leave a four year old unattended on a very busy pool deck with four locker rooms and hence four different ways to leave the pool area? A. You just don't leave a child unattended by a pool EVER. B. Some strange man could grab him (no one would even notice a crying child in all the chaos) and take him through the boys' locker room. By the time I got out to the pooldeck and noticed him gone, it would be too late. This is not an OK policy. My mom said I need to write a letter. I think she's right. It would be way too easy to lose a kid that way, and totally senseless. So far, I'm thinking we won't renew that membership.