Do you think it was handled right ?

I used to work as a kids swim coach at a popular swim school company. Working there was a dream as swim is something that I’m passionate about as well as teaching and working with kids is always just so fun.

A part of my job was to also teach special needs students in one on one private classes. I had quite a few of these students and they were all my favorite. Anytime a new special-needs student came up on my roster, I was stoked. This is the same energy I had when I saw a new SN student when my schedule came out. The other coaches that had the student before gave me a little bit of coaching on her behaviors and anything I should know, as was usual for our SN clients to allow them to have a consistent learning environment while still being with a new coach. I was by no means nervous to meet the student. In fact I was very excited. I thought we would have a lot of fun. My classes were 30 minutes long, and, as we stated to all of our clients, we get out of the water three minutes early to allow for detailed feedback one on one with the parents. The day came for our class and the client was late, thus adding to my anticipation. When the client came in the parrot told me that her daughter was very nice but very hyper and I saw as she walked in that she was pretty much jumping all over the place so I thought this class would be pretty fun. We begin our class and it became apparent that it would be a challenge for me to gain her, focus enough for her to listen to me and to proceed with our skills as needed. Referencing what my other coaches had talked to me about, I proceeded to try to go through the class all the while getting kicked and hit and even pushed away enough for her to get out of the water and run on the pool deck. it’s important to preface that I understand and have been trained on how to handle situation such as this, and I was able to do the best that I could with the situation I had. I understand that some SN students are combative and that’s totally understandable and generally very OK with me, but I started to panic when she bit me once in the chest and once on the arm. I had never had a student be this combative with me so of course I was shocked. And I was even more shocked that when I got out of the water at the 27 minute mark, her mother proceeded to yell at me. First about how we got out three minutes early and second about how I wasn’t doing the skills with her. I explained to her that since I am a new coach to the student, she and I don’t know each other and experienced a little bit of a riff in listening to coach. I kept it as calm, cool, and collected as I possibly could and redirected to my manager for any further questions and then proceeded to take myself out of the equation as it was not something that, at that point, I was qualified to handle. Later we canceled the client from our books for a multitude of reasons, mainly regarding the mother and her behavior. But it still left kind of a bitter taste in my mouth. We have plenty of students at our location alone that use swim class as a sort of physical therapy to allow them to exercise and be safe and have a little bit of fun. And that’s something that is always not only accepted but encouraged. This particular mother wanted to have her daughter learn and become a proficient swimmer and my managers deemed the student unteachable, further justifying the cancellation of their membership.

I’m curious to know if you think that this was the correct way to go about things. I understand why they were turned away, but I still feel sorry.