Did I mess up?

I am by nature a fairly critical and pessimistic person. Like you are never going to hear me come out of a movie saying “wow, that was the best movie ever!” I’ll say “oh that movie was pretty good.” And in my mind, even if I can’t think of a better movie offhand, I just know there has to be a better one out there. I know this about myself but I don’t even know where to begin changing it.So today we were at the pool. My son is 6 and has been taking swim lessons off and on. To my eyes he’s been a bit shaky in the pool. Sort of looks like he’s about to drown half the time but manages to get around and play. He’s still working on breathing and will just power through holding his breath until he finds a wall or a person to hang onto. We watch him pretty closely. We just came back from a vacation where he swam around short distances quite a bit but we had to tell him several times that he couldn’t do x,y, or z yet because he hadn’t fully learned how to swim.So at the pool today I was talking to him and explained that the big test is whether he can get across the length of the pool without stopping. I told him he’s got to work up to that and maybe we would try in a couple of weeks. He’s a pretty determined little dude and he decided he wanted to try today. So I said sure let’s go! I told him to roll on his back and float if he needed a rest. So off he went. He spent about 75% of the time on his back even doing back stroke but holy crap he made it to the other end without stopping to hold on to anything or anybody. I gave him big time praise and told him how that was awesome and how proud i was that he worked so hard learning to swim. Then I said (and this is where I’m kicking myself) “I didn’t realize you were going to go the whole way on your back” He was so bummed and said “I’m a terrible swimmer” I told him that absolutely not, the only thing hat matters for safety is that he made it from one end to the other without stopping, and that I was just surprised that he did backstroke. So he decided he wanted to do it again to prove he could do it with side breathing. And he did, it was slow, and he looked like he was about to drown half the time but he did it, stopping on his back to rest a lot. I praised him heavily again with no caveats. He was pretty excited and did it one more time before we left. Anyway, I just feel bad that I could t even let him be excited about his accomplishment without him feeling like he had an asterisk next to it. The other side of me is saying that the lifeguards do require that he do freestyle the whole time to pass their test for swimming on your own. Anyway reddit, am I a curmudgeon or did I provide proper praise and guidance? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2HUE0Cr