Mumsnet Talk

My DS is 5 and dd is 3. Ds has been swimming for two years at £3.70 a lesson. He can swim a full length unaided and confidently. It is so worth it for me. If I were to take them and teach them each week I would have to pay the same for them both plus myself. And I am not qualified. I feel lessons are a good investment. But if we couldn't afford it, they wouldn't go. When DS reaches his next level he is trialling for a swimming club. He is such a keen swimmer, we would cut back in other areas before we stopped. He is convinced he will be the next Olympic medilist.

In the Highlands we still have a combined "Hi Life" pass - £25 per month for the family. This includes swimming at any tome as often as you want - AND lessons are included (although there are long waiting lists). When you do get your heads around the lessons (half hour slots - times are 4:30 - 5pm - 5:30 and 6 with others in the daytime and later ones for older/better classes and on diff days of the week).

I don't think many up here realise how lucky we are to still have included lessons and reasonable times

I've taught DS. He had a few lessons that stopped for pool repairs. I carried on taking him myself and have got him swimming. I started doing some of the things he was doing in lessons but managed to progress really quickly. The repetition in the lessons wasn't helping - he needed to spend more time actually trying to swim.

There are some good videos with tips on - some really good ones from australia.

DS probably will go back to lessons at some point but will be able to start learning strokes. I'll still take him to pools to practise - there's no substitute for that.

Individual lessons here are £17 per half hour session or £10 for a group session. I wish I could afford for DD to go to either!

Wow - £17 per half hour.....I reckon skiing lessons are cheaper.... now that really is an incentive to teach them yourself.

This must be Rebecca Adlington lessons I guess!

I'd pay £17 for DD to have swimming lessons with Rebecca Adlington lol!

Agree with some of the others. I used to take my kids to the pool every weekend, and when they turned 5 they started lessons. Now at 7 DS1 can swim a lenght, and DS2 (nearly 6) can swim a width. I know some people will disagree but I feel that it would have been a waste of time to have lessons when they were younger.They learned very quickly. It's 15 pounds a month for each child for a weekly half hour lesson, with 7 other kids.

Swimming lessons were not a thing when I was little (30 years ago shock) and most people I know who are roughly my age and grew up in the UK can swim just fine
I had swimming lessons and I am 50. We also went with the school. We were also given free swim passes once we got out red badge. Most people cannot swim just fine, they dont know how to breathe and you can always tell the kids who have been taught by their parents as they cant swim properly.

Lessons earlier are not a waste, they teach water safety even to babies ie train them to automatically turn to the side when they jump in, no to panic in the water etc
My dcs had lessons from 6 months until mid teens so has cost me £1000 over 17 years and I dont regret a penny of it. DS 17 now has a p/t job as a lifeguard while in 6th form and they both do water sports. DH sometime grumbled at the cost, but in the summer when he watched them water skiing said he realised how well the money was spent.

Aye - tend to agree that lessons/water confidence form age 2.5 si is a good thing. By 4 ds2 is happily floating on front and back with floats and no panic - and 6yr old ds2 is happily backstroking down the pool in random zig zags and diving for bricks and through hoops.

35 years ago in York we were paying for swimming lessons from prob about 4 yrs - led to me being very confident in the ater - dw is th same - both used to race a bit too....

Last years Gairloch Canoe tragedy - regardless of other mistakes that were made that day - demonstrated the value of an 8yr old being a strong enough swimmer to cover 500 yds in the sea.......
Certainly made a lot of people up here increase the value they put on swimming as an early skill.

I am in Northampton and my boys lessons work out at approx £4.60 a lesson. If any-one wants to look:

www.swimforlife.me/

I pay £18 a week for my two a week. Half hour lesson with just them in the group. It's expensive but invaluable. I can't swim well as I came from a poor background and the only swimming I learnt was at school. It makes me so proud to see my kids swimming, and when we go on holiday you can see how much they love being able to enjoy the pool instead of clinging to the edges as I've seen some kids do. My eldest seems to be especially talented and wants to take up swimming more formally.

It really is worth the money and hopefully in a few years there will be no need for lessons and they will have a skill for life.

I am a swimming teacher and cannot teach my own dd to swim, she will not listen to me, as a result her friends who come to lessons with me are far better technical swimmers then she is, although she can swim further just because i take her to a club i run for 2 hours every weekend so she has huge stamina for just 5.

Saying that I am lucky to have friends who are teachers and can teach her to swim for me.

Please don't leave it to the school to teach your child to swim, Primary lessons are not good enough atm, as not enough time is focused on them to teach the children to swim and one swimming teacher can have up to 30 children, if all of them relied on schools to teach that's 30 children in armbands to teach in just 6 hours, and by high school many children who aren't strong swimmers are to far behind to bother trying to catch up.

I understand people think swimming lessons are expensive and that swimming on the whole is an expensive activity, my answer to that is i bet you couldn't take a family of 5 to the cinema for £10.35, thats the cost of a family swim at our local centre.