Teaching kids to swim
Both my kids can swim! Yay! đ„đŸ Some notes about the process:
The options were group lessons, individual lessons, and parent-is-the-teacher. We have tried all three. Individual lessons were logistically inconvenient and expensive. Group lessons were equally inconvenient, and while they seem less expensive, my impression was that if your kid is in a class of four kids, all just getting started from zero, then the kid is gonna make progress 4Ă slower, which cancels out the 4Ă lower price per lesson, but meanwhile each lesson has 100% of the hassle. False economy. So we ended up at parent-is-the-teacher.
We bought a membership at a nearby gym with a pool. The pool was mostly for adult lap swimming, but they set aside an hour a day for families. It was 4Âœ feet deep (1.4 m), which was greatâdeep enough for kids to not scratch their feet on the bottom, but shallow enough for me to comfortably stand.
I get cold in pools, especially lap-swimming pools which are not overly heated. The process was much more pleasant after I started wearing 1.5 mm Neoprene wetsuit pants into the pool. Thanks @jefftk for the idea. (The kids never got cold.)
For my second kid, it took 12 hours (24 sessions, each â30 minutes before the kid petered out and asked to get out) from âbasically never been in the waterâ to âjumping in and swimming all around by himself, while Iâm sitting in a chair lifeguarding.â I think my first kid was similar, although I didnât keep as careful notes.
If thereâs some magic recipe to teach a kid to swim much faster than that, well itâs too late for me, but please share in the comments.
Each kid was ~6 years old at the time.
From my perspective, the victory condition was that the kid can tread water, jump in, and climb out. (Also, doggy paddle, but that doesnât really count as a separate thing, itâs kinda just treading water while trying to move forward.) [Update: Per comment, also to swim some appreciable distance by themselves, the farther the better.] This list is basically capturing what it takes to fall into a body of water and probably not die, and also to have fun in a pool with friends.
Most online tutorials would say that I was Doing It Wrong, and that I should have instead started right in on Proper Strokes like the crawl. But: (1) even the kids who learn Proper Strokes will still also need to learn to tread water and doggy paddle sooner or later; (2) you can swim faster and farther with Proper Strokes than doggy paddle, but Iâm not trying to get them onto the varsity swim team or go boating without a life vest, I just want them to fall into water and probably not die, and to have fun in a pool with friends; (3) teaching Proper Strokes seemed more annoying, so I didnât do it, sue me; (4) they can always learn Proper Strokes later.
One of my kids is very overly analytical, wanting to talk through everything before doing anything (âOK and then how am I supposed to move my left leg?â). My other kid is very under-ly analytical, and basically ignores all verbal instructions (this is related to his speech and language delay). In between would have been ideal, but the latter was a bit closer to optimal for what we were doing.
Think of learning to swim as a bit like making a giant lookup table in your brain: If my body is in configuration X, and I contract muscle Y, then Iâll move according to Z. Everything is different in the water. I think it just takes a bunch of time in the water, moving different ways, to internalize this. Itâs mostly subconscious.
(Unfortunately, building that lookup table is slowed by a chicken-and-egg bootstrapping challenge: a kidâs body moves differently in the water when thereâs an adult holding onto him, or he has a floatie thing, etc.)
We mostly didnât use any life vests or other floatie things. Instead the basic idea was: hold the kid, with less and less support over time. Beyond that, I was just winging it.
There were a bunch of sessions where I wrote âno obvious progressâ in my notes. Donât lose faith!
PSA: everyone should learn what drowning looks like, and it does not look like how itâs depicted on TV. âThere is very little splashing, no waving and no yelling or calls for help of any kind ⊠In [dozens of drownings each year], the adult will watch [from within 25 meters] but have no idea it is happening.â
Awesome!
I recently found out that you can apparently begin teaching a child to swim as early as 4 months. This seems important since children are at highest risk of drowning at ages 1-4, but the rate was found to be far lower among children these ages who had had formal swimming instruction: https://ââjamanetwork.com/ââjournals/ââjamapediatrics/ââfullarticle/ââ381058
I wonder how much early swim lessons are a proxy for parental conscientiousness, awareness of drowning as a risk, and income. The study considered controlling for income and then decided to instead control for âless than high school education vs more than high school educationâ on the part of the relative answering the questions. :(
Yeah, I was comfortable swimming before I could walk. Not like, make good progress per say, but like, if I fell in water with no flotation assistance, I could comfortably hold my breath, orient, get to the surface, and float on my back comfortably without assistance.
âFrom my perspective, the victory condition was that the kid can tread water, jump in, and climb out.â
I would consider adding an additional condition of being able to swim 30-50 meters without aids. It addresses the potential risk of falling into the water in a location where itâs challenging to get out.
Good point, thanks, I just added that to the post. Pretty sure my kids can do that too.
Can you give more description of what you did in your 30-minute sessions? Holding the kid the whole time? Taking breaks? Did they/âyou get bored? Did you do any other playing in the water to make it more interesting for them?
Kids were not bored. Being in the water is such a novelty. They were always exploring how their bodies moved, splashing, making bubbles, playing with the lane separators, admiring the underwater light, etc. I would make up little activities, like trying to spin around in the water, blowing bubbles, try to get your feet out of the water in front of you then behind you then in front of you then behind you ⊠I dunno, lots of stuff, and it wound up looking wildly different for my older kid versus my younger kid. My older (highly verbal) kid wanted gamification: a series of challenges to beat. My younger (semi-nonverbal) kid would basically just make up his own mind about what he wanted to do each minute and I would try to work around that. He actually got really into having a floaty noodle, and got very upset without it, so I just did the best I could to make sure that he was holding it in his left hand half the time and his right hand half the time so he could practice swimming with the other hand, and did what I could to reduce his reliance on it, and eventually I kinda forced him to play âchase the noodleâ where I would push the noodle away from him and he would swim to it.
See, I think the description of the challenges you set for them is the most helpful part of this whole post! If you have any more you can think of, please do share them.
This is great, Jeff and I have been trying to figure this out.
A lot of lessons include learning to float on your back. This makes sense for babies, who are more chub and less bone. It seems like ability to do this for kids and adults depends a lot on how buoyant you are, and my kids are not built for it. One of mine managed to backfloat once under perfect conditions, but Iâm assuming any amount of panic /â waves /â etc would sink her. So Iâve stopped trying to use âlearn to swimâ time for this, and they can practice it âwater playâ time if they want.
Another question is whether to learn a standard method for treading water vs develop your own style. Both Jeff and one of my kids have developed something non-standard that works for them, and with the other kids Iâm unsure how much to teach them the more standard method vs âyou do you.â Some of both, I guess.
Passively floating on your back is hard for skinny folk! Much easier to backfloat while moving, and itâs still a much lower energy activity than treading water upright. I wouldnât recommend a kid trying to practice backfloating while holding still unless theyâre naturally buoyant. Instead, the question is âhow little energy can you expend while staying upâ, and âtracking your position by looking at the ceiling so you donât bump your head while doing backstroke lapsâ. The faster you go, the easier it is to stay up, but the more energy you expend. Thereâs a comfortable medium thatâll be different for each person, and change as their body changes.
Congratulations!
I taught swimming as my first part-time job in high school and I got the same impression you have about the learning process being mostly subconscious. Feedback can be necessary for less intuitive aspects of stroke technique but kids seemed to improve at this level of swimming by figuring out what something should feel like and then orienting towards that sense.
For example, some would hold their head up while trying to get onto their back, which would inevitably keep their hips too low to float, even while moving backwards. Iâd usually explain or demonstrate what was going on but the real hump to get over was whatever aversive sensation theyâd get when having their head back in the water. Sometimes it was that having water in their ears felt foreign or that having their head on the same plane as the rest of their body felt almost like falling backwards. Once that sensation didnât bother them, theyâd be able to put their heads backwards and seemingly âfeelâ that pull up on their hips. The benefit of my instruction was essentially just getting them safely to that point where it clicked and then that process took care of the rest. Sometimes there would be minor regressions where the fear seemed to take a few classes to be extinguished but the subsequent attempts generally went more smoothly.
My parents, especially my dad, love water and swimming. So I was taught to âswimâ before I could crawl, mostly just learning to hold my breath as I was bobbed around in the water, and then to manage to keep my head mostly above water (when intended) and navigate (slowly) around with arm floaties. My younger brother didnât get taught until later, like maybe 1 and a half. He also loves the water, but not as much as me. I feel so at home in the water and under water. So personally, Iâd recommend starting young and not having any particular goals in mind for the first few years other than âhang out in pool with kid for 20-30 min, and donât let them drownâ. Actual swimming strokes can come much later.