Aquatic Center

First of all, in the day and age of water parks complete with super slides, spraying implements, lazy rivers and wave pools, the Idaho Falls Aquatic Center is greatly lacking. A simple, yet clammy, indoor pool with a couple diving boards and one small slide, this isn’t the first place I think of taking my children on a hot summer day.
However, it’s the perfect place to take children for swimming lessons.
In fact, years ago the Idaho Falls Aquatic Center out-​parented me. All three of my children took swimming lessons there. Years before, when we lived in Utah, I took my youngest to a Mommy/​Tot class at the local swimming pool. He hated it. While all the other toddlers complaisantly bobbed in the water with doting parents, my child would have none of it. For the length of his lesson I would stand in the shallow end while he would climb the stairs, jump into the water, climb, jump, climb, jump, until someone blew the whistle to cue the blessed end of swimming lessons (because surprisingly, standing idly in my swimming suit before watchful parents and teenage lifeguards is not my idea of a good time).
Needless to say, I was more than a little worried when I enrolled the aforementioned child in a parentless class one summer at the IF Aquatic Center which strongly discourages parents from watching lessons poolside. You are asked to observe from a balcony above the pool, complete with plate-​glass windows – far from being able to swoop in and carry a belligerent child to a private time-​out. And for some reason, eliminating that possibility for parental intervention makes it much easier for instructors to prevent that belligerent behavior in the first place.
It was fabulous! Not only could I watch their lessons far from all the action, but I could observe as very attentive teachers kept children on task as they learned how to swim.
So while I wouldn’t recommend this pool for a fun getaway, I would definitely recommend it for swimming lessons.