Why I have started posting on social media again, this time on Instagram
When Evan and Sarah were toddlers, I used to share bits of our family life on Facebook fairly often. As they grew older, the updates became less frequent until I was mostly reading what everyone else had posted and putting up very little myself. Instagram was even quieter on my side; I had become a bit of a lurker on both apps while keeping up with what my friends had been doing.
There is always something happening in a family with four kids, but for years I was busy living those moments and didn’t feel much urge to turn them into posts. When the children were younger, I was also less sure what I wanted to share about them. An occasional family photo was fine, yet filling my feed with unrelated snippets never felt quite like me. If I was going to start posting regularly, I wanted something I cared enough about to keep talking about after the first few updates.
In 2024 I took Evan and Sarah to Uncle Jack, the coach who taught me to swim about thirty years ago, so they could learn their strokes properly. The idea of a competitive squad came later, followed by a lot of reading, conversations with old swimming friends and working out what it would mean for the family. Evan started with AquaTech in January this year, Sarah followed in March, and our calendar has looked rather different ever since. By then I finally had something I wanted to share regularly, because swimming had become such a big part of our family life.
From the parent side of the pool
Evan and Sarah are still at the beginning of competitive swimming, and neither of them is one of those kids who seems to win everything on entering the pool. There are basics to work on, races that don’t go to plan and days when progress is difficult to spot. They also started later than some of the children around them in Singapore, so I know the feeling of looking at another swimmer’s years of experience and wondering how much catching up is possible. Their starting point belongs in these posts just as much as the good swims.
When I tried to learn about this world, I found plenty on technique and training, and it was easy enough to look up meet results. What I wanted more of was the view from a parent trying to make the week work. A race might last less than a minute, while the warm-up, marshalling, meals and waiting can take up most of a day. On ordinary weekdays there is school, homework, transport and the question of whether anyone remembered to pack the right equipment. With four kids in the family, even a small change to training time has a way of moving several other things around.
There is also the less practical part: knowing when to talk about a swim and when to let the kids have a quiet ride home. I pay attention to their times, probably more closely than I once imagined I would, but I’m learning that a PB doesn’t tell me everything about how a meet went for them. Sometimes what I remember best is that they got back on the blocks after a disappointing race, or that one of them came away with a new friend. I couldn’t find much written from a swim dad’s point of view when we began, and that gave me a reason to start sharing our own days at the pool.
What I’ve been posting
My 12 September post was about Evan and Sarah’s first major competition together at Pesta Sukan. Seeing them outside the OCBC Aquatic Centre in their team shirts brought back my own swimming days, except I was now the dad keeping track of reporting times and trying to film from the stands. I wrote more about that day on the blog, including the long stretch of waiting around those very short races.
In a video of Evan’s dives, I put old clips beside newer ones and could finally see the progress that was hard to notice when I watched him train every day. I also wrote about five things I’ve learnt as a swim parent, including the logistics, the meet-day waiting and my growing ability to remember PBs to two decimal places. When I introduced Sarah, I wanted to talk about the friends she has made at the club as well as the work she puts in, because swimming has become part of her social world too.
I’ve found myself enjoying the videos as much as the posting. Years ago, editing on my MacBook with iMovie could take days, especially once I started fussing over transitions and effects. These days I can usually put a video together in less than an hour. The time goes into choosing the clips and working out what I actually want to say; the editing itself no longer eats the whole weekend.
Of course, I’ve picked a niche that is basically my kids swimming, so finding something new to say won’t always be easy. From the stands, one training session can look a lot like the next, and there are only so many ways to film another length of the pool. I’ll have to pay closer attention to the small changes, look back through older clips and think about what I’ve learnt as their dad along the way. Finding fresh content within that routine is a challenge, and I am happy to take it on.
I expect my Instagram will keep following the kids through training and meets, including the ordinary sessions that never produce a medal or a dramatic result. If another parent starting out in Singapore finds something familiar or useful in what I share, that would be lovely, and I hope the kids will enjoy looking back on these early days too.