Look at him go! Granger Smith and Amber Smith’s 8-month-old son, Maverick, is learning to swim.
“My mind is blown,” the country singer, 42, captioned a Thursday, April 28, Instagram video of his youngest child’s 10th Infant Swim Rescue lesson. “He can barely crawl, but now he knows how to hold his breath, twist his body, find the air, float on his back and cry. He can do this falling in head first, feet first or any orientation. He has the skills to float until help comes.”
The Texas native called his baby boy a “warrior,” assuring his social media followers that the little one is never in “pain or danger.”
Granger encouraged other parents to enroll their infants in similar classes, opening up about the “deadly miscalculation” he and Amber, 40, made in June 2019 when their 3-year-old son, River, drowned.
“Spread the word,” the “Backroad Song” singer concluded the caption. “River’s life mattered. He’s saving thousands of others. Hear me.”
In a post of her own, Amber wrote that when Maverick is in the water, he now knows how to “turn, rotate, find the air, breathe and cry.” The actress added that while seeing Maverick cry during his lessons can be “scary,” it’s “even scarier and more painful to [lose] a child to fatal drowning.”
Amber “trusted the process,” writing, “I watched as it worked every step of the way! We made the decision to give Maverick the skills he needed to find the air, the skills River needed that we didn’t know about, and my goodness, he did it!! And he wasn’t afraid of our instructor, or the water and he smiled the biggest smiles after, so I could do hard things for 10 minutes to give our son the skills he needs.”
She and her husband, who are also the parents of daughter London, 10, and son Lincoln, 8, have been open about water safety since River’s passing — although Amber is “nervous” near water.
“I don’t want to go to pools, I don’t want to be around swimming or any body of water for the most part, but I grin and bear it for my kiddos,” the Hot Air star wrote via Instagram in July 2020. “I smile on the outside, and tell them how incredible they are when they ask me to watch them jump in or watch them hold their breath for long periods of time, or when they tell me to watch them float face down, when inside I’m fighting the demons in my memories and thoughts.”
In March of the following year, the pair announced that baby No. 4 was on the way. Maverick arrived in August 2021.
