To be infuriated by people who sit in the swimming viewing area but aren't watching the swimming.

[N3wUs3rNam3Again]

I watch my childs swim lessons from a small viewing area, for her class there are 5 or 6 seats. Most weeks a mum with two older boys also sit in the area, both boys are on their phones, often so is the mum, the boys definitely don't watch any swimming. The boys go up to save seats before the rest of us have dropped our children off, class of between 6-8 so rarely can the rest of us get a seat and need to stand.

AIBU to think the boys should sit somewhere else. There is alternative seating away from viewing window and downstairs. Boys are probably 10/11 and 12/13.

Maybe the mum is using the spare time to work or order a food shop etc.

Watching children swim is akin to watching paint dry. It’s endearing at first and is great when they finally get the hang of it but gets very tedious. I’ve spent many years of my life at children’s swimming lessons. Lessons last half an hour. Parents aren’t there to watch, they are there to wait for their children to finish the lesson. It’s not worth going home for a half hour lesson and there is generally only one seating area.

Yeah maybe, I don't really care about the mum, I get that her child would want to see her watching and there is time when your child is waiting for their turn so fair enough, it's just the boys really, they are not the least bit interested in watching their sister swim yet are sat their in the 'viewing' seats every week.

some of the responses on here are bizarre - op wants to watch child learn to swim, no need to question why she wants to do that or comment that it’s boring..this is what she wants to do. My Dd works as a swimming teacher in the holidays and many parents want to watch their children!
op - I empathise with your frustration and would ask other mum if her boys could move to another area, assuming they are old enough that they do not require constant close supervision.

Take a foldy up camping chair.

Thank you @ShanghaiDiva I wonder whether some of the posters are identifying with my post and are taking offence.

I don't know why I didn't think of this. Love it.

My work here is done x

I had this when mine had swimming lessons and there wasn't enough seats. The lesson was in a roped off section of the pool and the rest was open for public swimming. I used to go in the public bit and keep an eye on them while I was doing my lengths, then they'd join me for some fun swimming after the lesson.

I understand your frustration op, people are completely selfish. In fact this thread triggered memories of exactly the same irritation at swimming lessons of the pushy ones regularly taking ages to shampoo/condition their kids at one of the - three - shower heads whilst 20 kids stood shivering waiting and the viewing seats… ugh - the ones who bagsied the seats NEVER watched. I’m so glad those days are over.

Why do you want to watch your child swim? To make sure they’re safe, to critique their skills, to critique the instructors skills?

How did those women hand over their children?

OP wants to watch her child and the other woman wants to sit in specific seats with her children. No one is in the wrong here.

OP can ask the woman and her children to sit elsewhere. If she refuses to move, that doesn't make her a bad person or wrong.

This is just pathetic!!
The lesson is like 30 mins long, realistically you would only be sitting there for like 20 mins by the time you have to go back to pick up your kid. Who cares….
you lose some you win some!!

Perhaps not well behaved enough to though. Or developmentally delayed, nuerodivergent, etc

You cannot tell who is old enough for what from looking.

Umm me, I care hence the post and it's actually about 29 minutes, the viewing area is upstairs so I exit the changing rooms and walk up the stairs, and when the lesson ends I walk back downstairs and through the changing area, bizarrely that doesn't take 5 minutes each way.

To see them make progress?
To watch them having fun?

The point is that the OP cares. Nothing pathetic about it.

You don't know that at all. How do you decide that another person's child is old enough for anything?

I don't think this is the case, as they're able to be left alone to bagsy seats whilst mum gets her daughter sorted in the changing rooms to handover her child before the lesson and after the lesson they sit in the downstairs seating area when their mum is waiting for daughter to shower and change.

We also have those who leave all their belongings in the changing cubicles so there are no empty ones to change in, you don't know if it belongs to someone waiting for a shower or someone currently in a lesson. Such selfishness.

She's leaving them unsupervised before and after the lesson.

If you want to watch your kid swimming and there are people in the seats for that who are just on their phones or whatever, just use your words and politely say "oh, sorry, do you mind if you just swap seats with me so I can see my child in the pool".

Give your head a wobble.

they can sit where they want

I’d be really annoyed if you told my kid to go off at sit somewhere else. I’m a polite person so I’d probably tell you politely to fuck off sit there yourself as we’d gotten there first