To let DS stop swim lessons?

I’ve just cancelled my ds’s lessons with swim England . I’m going to take him for myself for a while and see how we get on but I have also found some lesson elsewhere which are a bit cheaper. At £50 a month and the rate he is learning it could take years and £1000’s to get him anywhere near competent .

Mine passed stage 4 last week and I don't consider them a competent swimmer at all! Can your child definitely swim 25m confidently? Because that isn't a stage 4 requirement so they won't have been assessed on that.

25m in a calm pool is incredibly different than 25m in the sea/ocean with no sides.

TBH @user1478188491i’d stick with it for another while.

I think you have a somewhat unrealistic idea about what children learn in their weekly swimming lessons!

I would keep going.

The arguments for stopping just don’t stack up. People say ‘he can do 25m, that’s enough to get him out of trouble/to the edge of a pool/boat’. It’s really not. That’s 25m in ideal conditions. If he is ever in trouble in the pool/ocean, he will likely be more exhausted already, there may be other children to save first or he will be having to swim and then tread water or vice versa. As someone said above, being able to swim 200m in ideal conditions, means you could be confident they could do 25m in an emergency.

’Butterfly isn’t an essential life skill’ - no, but now is algebra or languages, but it isn’t about that. All learning is about training your mind to think, and/or better handle other problems. In this case, learning other strokes has a benefit - butterfly uses so much more energy, if you can do 200m butterfly, you are fit enough to do far longer in the other strokes. Also backstroke is useful if you are in an emergency, you can swim freestyle and get exhausted, you can switch to backstroke for a short time and still make headway, but gain your breath back.

He gets discouraged - yes he will. And he will many other times in life. When he fails an exam, misses getting into a sports team/uni course, when a girl/boy he likes breaks up with him. Your role isn’t to protect him from the disappointment or discouragement, but to parent and give him the tools to get through it. Perhaps this is a good moment for later - in future he struggles with maths, you remind him how he struggled with swimming but he preserved and passed all the courses.

I say keep going. Remind him when he is 18 and wants to take a gap year to Australia, he’ll want to run into the ocean with his mates. He will not want to have to stay waist deep or return to shore (or be rescued by a lifeguard) as the strong waves there mean being able to swim for 25m is nothing.

Wearing a life jacket off a dinghy? Or off a cross channel ferry…

Don't think perfect technique is essential, nor are swimming lessons. But 25m is a very short distance.

To me, the ability to swim at least 200-500 metres confidently, even on a bad day (so would need to be able to do longer typically), to swim in clothes, to know self rescue and ideally how to rescue others - those I think are essential. And in the UK, also how to cope with cold water shock, because if you fall in it will be actively cold most of the year, and we're a highly tidal island, so understanding tides, rips and how to safely manage those are important. Also things like pulling yourself out without using steps.

If you fall into water, it's likely to be a river or sea rather than a pool (lakes are cold but relatively less risky as usually no currents), so that's the hazard you're protecting against, and need to have skills for.

My measure is whether he'd be ok if he fell off a boat. Sounds like not.

Totally agree! I also don’t see why you need continuing lessons to learn to swim longer than a length. If you can swim the length of a pool then surely it’s about building stamina to swim longer distance?

I stopped when they could swim 1 length.

Yes. Stop. Why would he need any more than that unless he wants to. The idea that butterfly stroke is a life skill is SUCH a scam!

Stage 4 is nowhere close to a confident and strong swimmer. I do swim trials at our local club and the number of parents who say they’re stage 5 or 6 and very good …and completely fail to complete a length with a decent stroke is unbelievable.

If you are near water then swimming lessons are important but there's no harm in having a break

Swimming Lessons!!!

Really depends. Mine were not allowed to stop (nor did they ask as it was standard and everyone they knew did it), until they could swim several km’s proficiently in good time without being stuffed.

However, we are a country surrounded by beaches, and if you get caught in a rip and are being towed out you need to know you will be fine to swim several km’s across and back in. It’s people who panic or can’t do that who drown here. Pretty much all adult drownings here, (excluding rivers where alcohol is generally a factor, or boat crashes where people are injured), are people not born here who have never had swimming lessons the way they are done here with this being the expectation, and think swimming the length of a pool is all you need.

I'm happy for mine to stop when they can swim 200m. My reason being that if they can swim 200 m on a good day they will have the capacity to swim 10-15 on a bad day if they say fall out of a boat.
We do regularly swim in the ocean plus do kayaking etc. so good swimming is important for us.

I think that’s enough personally. Just make sure you do swimming recreationally.

I wouldn't keep going if it's a battle every week. I'm not sure that's very conducive to learning. Could he have a break and go back in 6 months? My DC got back into swimming and improved their stamina when they wanted to do things like surfing and SUP after years of dull, ineffective, lessons at the council pool.

I think if they can swim well enough to do at least a length, dive in, all confidently and do not wish to join a swimming club for competitions then as long as they swim regularly then lessons can stop. DS can do crawl front and back but has a long way to go. He likes the lessons still. More difficult when they moan about it. Ours do life saving once a term too.

25m is fine, especially as DC is not enjoying it. It will get her safely to the side in a swimming pool. Just make sure you keep that level up by going separately or including lots of fun swimming on holidays.

Although the stages are supposed to be a standard, they are meaningless really because swim schools are restricted by the space... in Stage 4 (and5) mine could only do widths as that's all there was space for.

Are you confident to do the rest yourself? Self rescue, swimming in clothing, multiple lengths, getting stuff off the Notton of the pool etc?

I wouldn’t classify stage 4 as a competent swimmer so no personally I wouldn’t stop yet. All my did until stage 7.

I don’t either. They don’t worry about percentages, it’s all about what colour hat they’re on. That’s what gets them motivated. I say ‘Another few months and you’ll be a blue hat’ and that’s what they strive for.

Lots of people drop out around stage 4 and 5 and therefore classes become much smaller and more focused. If you could get through the next stage I think it would pay off long term.

We stopped at the end of stage 4. She had had enough and I felt a lot of it was the finer technique and stamina at that point. They start not being able to move up because they can't do 1 stroke out of 4 correctly. We just moved to swimming for fun.