its how you say it

Awesome awesome. long back at my mum’s place we saw this movie ‘pride’ about a swimming team, making it against all odds. The coach repairs a pool and makes a bunch of no hopers win the championships. In that he teaches the kids to swim. Cup your hands and reach out and hear your biceps, he keeps repeating. Nice movie that I saw along with Jispa. After that we have been telling her to do the same in her swimming.
Jasmine goes everyday with her to the swimming class. While Jispa is fast, when she is asked to swim fast she invariably makes smaller rapid arm movements and doesn’t stretch her hands. Jasmine tells her all the time, reach out and cup your hands. The penny never dropped.
In my swimming, I have been trying to coach myself as well. I am a self taught swimmer. V-inu and me went to Shivaji park and learn by watching what eth others did. I knew a bit as I used to swim in the third standard. The next time I got to swim was in FY Bcom. A gap of ten years. I obviously almost started on square zero. So these days I too have been teaching myself. Breathe out under water and breathe in on the fourth stroke. Then yes ‘cup your hands and reach out and hear your biceps’. These days I have been able to do it better. Otherwise, I would forget either the hands or forget to flap the legs or forget the breathing rhythm. The last few days I have been doing it well. In fact I have improved so much that today I could do 25m up and 25 m down with no break. Not bad. It also helps me go faster.
Two days back I had made the big jump in this where I could coordinate all of them pretty decent and go much faster. In the evening, I told Jispa, that you know what ‘I managed to go faster today. I cupped my hands and reache3d out and heard my biceps. I went so fast.’ “ya??” “yes. You know how I realised I was going faster? I saw the tiles below and saw the tiles move very fast suddenly. You should try it as well.”
Yesterday at dinner, she told me. “daddy. I was swimming today and suddenly remembered what you said. I started reaching out and cupping my hands. I wondering what happened and only when I came out of the water I realised that the others were still reaching the tiles. I went very fast” “yayy” “yayyyy”.
Bechari jasmine thak gayi bolte bolte. She didn’t do it at all. Just a reframing of the statement made an enormous impact. Even while I was about to say it, something told me that this will make her listen.