Teaching Your Children How to Swim
Posted: Monday, June 23, 2008
by Diana Clark
BD Global Products LLC
Most children love to play in the water. Splashing and playing during bath time can be the earliest stages of teaching your child how to swim. While in the bath tub they can begin to put their heads under the water and get used to how this feels. One of the best ways to teach your child how to swim is as simple as taking them to a pool as often as you can. If you have a pool of your own it is imperative that your child learn how to swim as early as possible. A young child can so quickly go out of the house and get in the pool without the parent or caregiver knowing they are gone.
Our younger son was a little more cautious and took a little bit longer to learn how to swim. You have to work at their speed and not try to force anything on them. Certainly not the "throw them in the pool and tell them. 'sink or swim'" method. To begin with, hold them and go under water with them and right back up. When they are comfortable with going under water, have them stand on the side of the pool and jump to you. When they jump, allow them to go underwater and bring them right back up. Move back a distance in which they are comfortable, and let them jump in and swim to you, beginning with very short distances, such as two or three feet.
We have three grandsons that are 14 months apart. By the time they came along, we lived in a neighborhood that had a neighborhood pool. They learned to swim at two and three. They have birthdays in September, October and November, so they were close to being three and four. When we got to the stage of them jumping in and swimming to me, I would line them up and they would jump in one at a time and swim to me. The first one that reached me I would lift him around to my back on one side where he could hold on. The second one I would lift around to my other side and I would hold the third one in front of me and then carry them to the ladder where they would get out and we would do the same thing again and again. I felt like the mother monkey carrying her young on her back. We had a good time.
When we took breaks, I put the little arm floaties on them. I am a little hesitant to use floaties or life preservers on young children, because they do give a false sense of security for the child, but sometimes they are necessary. It is important that you spend time in showing your children when they first begin that they are unable to stay above water by themselves. Don't scare them, but tell them you are going to let them go to show them they cannot swim yet. Our youngest grandson had no fear, so I had to watch him more closely than the others. He jumped in once by himself and of course went under. He was paddling frantically, but did not take in any water. I was about four feet from him so I was able to get to him quickly. Fortunately he was a quick learner and never did that again. As it turned out he learned to swim a couple of weeks before the other two older boys did because he was not afraid for me to back up more. Before they jumped, I would let them set how far back they wanted me to be in the water. Because they set the limits and I honored their limits, they learned to trust me and knew I would not do anything to hurt or scare them.
My oldest granddaughter is 3 years older than the boys. She learned to swim early in the summer when she was three. Since she was our first and only grandchild at the time, I was able to give her my undivided attention. By July she was going off the diving board by herself. I always waited for her by the exit ladder near the deep end. After diving she would always swim up to me. One day she asked me if I could touch the bottom of the pool, which was about 9 feet deep. So I went down and touched the bottom and came up. After I came up, she wanted to try. She was so buoyant she could not go down very far. After trying to get to the bottom on her own several times, she finally asked me to push her down. We were at our neighborhood pool with 2 life guards and neighbors sitting around the pool. I could only think what they might think if they saw me pushing my granddaughter under water! But my granddaughter would not let up, and she wasn't going to until I helped her touch the bottom of the pool. So I pushed her down with both hands on her shoulders while looking around to see if anyone was watching us. Even with my help on her shoulders she could not go all the way down. She was so disappointed she asked me to push her harder. So I pushed her down with my hands then down with my feet on her shoulders. I was concerned that I would be taken away for child abuse and my flimsy excuse of "But she told me to do it" would not stand up in court. She was able to touch the bottom with the "hand and foot push" procedure and came up very happy and saying, "do it again Nanna." Which, of course, I did after checking the visual field of those around me.
We have very happy memories of those swimming days. Four of five of my grandchildren are teenagers now and still love to swim and I enjoy seeing them swim. I am looking forward to teaching my great-grandchildren how to swim and this is why it is not only important but beneficial in teaching your loved ones how to swim.
This Article has been viewed 69 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Hi Diana, it was wonderful to hear about your children and grandchildren learned to swim at a young age. The love and pride you have for them comes beaming through in your story. It would be nice if there were some tips on how to teach them such as body positioning and arm strokes etc.. Thanks again and God bless you!Thank you for taking the time to write. It was good to hear from you Diana
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.