When did your kids start swimming lessons?

Both learned to swim about age four. My son had lessons but I think I taught my daughter to swim.

I'm considering the same for my 4 year old who recently started school. It's become clear that literally every other kid at school has weekly swimming lessons so we feel late. We plan on starting them after Christmas when hopefully he's totally used to school and ready for an after school or weekend commitment.

My DS started at age 4, before he started school but was on a weekend so no worries of tiredness. DD is 3 and has been doing them for around 6 months, though we have had a few skipped sessions due to tiredness as hers are on a Friday night and she goes to nursery until 5.30pm.

DD1 4 months and DDs 2&3 6 months. I did try DD2 earlier but she got very cold even in a hydrotherapy pool!

that said, I'd wait till after Christmas for your DD. Autumn term is tough!

Mine started as babies. I just signed them up as soon as they were old enough for the class. Just assumed that was the done thing but now maybe thinking I was over zealous!

Since they were babies. It's an essential life skill.

About 4 months, I used to really enjoy the mum and baby classes with him, then being in the water with him until he went up past the early duckling stages into the big pool, he did have about a year out during covid when the lessons all stopped. We do live by the coast though so it's very usual here.

Mine started age 3
Still absolutely loves it !

Age 4. I had always taken them each week myself as babies & taught them to float, put their faces in the water & kick, but didnt bother paying for baby swim classes as most dc are not physiologically capable of learning proper strokes till 4 or 5.

weekends are often taken up with older dc hobby.

You cant do that forever, its not fair on younger dc. You need to split time fairly between them or one parent take each etc.

You will always have people on a thread like this saying they did it from 12 weeks.

Personally I had one child who started age 4 when preschool age, but crashed out of swimming lessons once we started juggling them with school, and had about 18 months off before we tried again.

Trust your gut. Leave it to the summer now, or maybe next Sept. They learn so much quicker at 6ish than at 4ish anyway. I wasn't allowed to start swimming lessons until I was 7 and I was a squad swimmer for years.

If I had our time over I would invest in 1:1 lessons. Progress can be so slow in group lessons, I swear it ends up costing just as much.

We live next to a large body of water so essential, non-negotiable for us from early on. Didn't bother with baby classes, just took them for exposure regularly until lessons.

DC1 (6y) - started 1:1 preschool lessons age 3.5. Progress was slow! Now doing well in local leisure centre group classes.
DC2 (3y) - drop in toddler swim sessions at local leisure centre started 18m. Regular group lessons there started age 2. Cracked swimming without floatation devices at the same time as DC1! Can swim 20m independently. At age 3. Blows my mind! This kid is a fish.

We did baby classes but real classes around 4 yo.

2 years old by 3 he could swim no floats etc

Mine started as babies and have never stopped, although they have now done all the staged lessons, they both now take more advanced classes.

We did baby/ toddler lessons for the fun of it so continued into Foundation around age 4, but there was very little gain around age 4-5. If you're staying in doing lessons that they enjoy, that's fine, but there isn't a massive benefit in starting formal lessons at that age, and a bit of maturity of physical development helps speed it up.

Check when the school does swimming as having the foundations in by then does pay off.

I now have a teen doing lifeguarding... I've been trekking to the pool most weeks for 15 years 🤯

before they started school, but teacher said one child should wait til she was 4
saturday morning lessons luckily

Some children won't cope with swimming after school during reception. As a toddler, mine always needed a nap after swimming, and some children find a school week quite enough.

Mine did half-term "crash courses" to start with, and didn't really have much clue; she tried, but found it difficult to understand what she needed to do differently. I didn't think weekly lessons were going to be useful until that changed. Once it did, I got her signed up for weekly lessons. That was a bit later than others, but she ended up a competent swimmer.

(As a pre-schooler, I took her swimming myself regularly, so she was used to the water. I did look at the baby classes, but having observed them from the other half of the pool, there wasn't really anything we weren't doing without the extra fee!)

I’m a big swimming advocate and mine did the baby swimming lessons. But DD1 had a ‘year off’ in reception (stopped the classes where I went in, and didn’t start ‘real’ swimming lessons until Y1).

She was knackered in reception, and we were all learning the juggle with after school club etc.

I think as long as they can swim by 6 ish, you’re fine.

My very sensible, mature one was 4.5. The one who is a bit more typical was 5.5. The 5.5 year old one is now at most a stage behind their classmates at age 8. It's very area dependent - it seems like everyone on MN puts their children in lessons early but at the very middling school I teach at there is a real range of abilities by Y4 and in another school, there were only every 2 or 3 children in a class of 30 who could actually swim.

Edited to add: Obviously we took them swimming ourselves semi-regularly and we also had a couple of holidays a year where they were in the water daily but I don't think that made much difference compared to proper swimming lessons.

Our leisure centre run a termly timetable, so even if you wanted to start now they would make you wait til January anyway, so not sure why you would worry about starting now when they would only have 4-5 lessons before stopping.

(Edited as pressed submit before finished!).

I wouldn’t bother. Take her swimming yourself at weekends and just splash around having fun. You don’t even have to do it every weekend, just make it a regular thing every 2-3w. Instead of weekly lessons, sign her up to an intensive course during the holidays. A half-hour lesson every day for five days and she will very likely be swimming by the end of the week. Then you maintain it by your regular pool trips. When you feel she’s got the energy for weekly lessons she will get so much more out of them if she already has the basics of swimming.

Obviously not including baby classes.

DS started age 4 shortly after starting reception.
DD started age 3 so a year before starting school.

Neither have ever been too tired after school to do hobbies though and have both done a wide range of activities.

12 weeks, ridiculous when I look back, but they’re both very water confident as teens which is great on holidays.

My first born was three when he started my second was 4months but with a break around 18months with Covid then we started straight back up again. We live on the coast so it was one on my highest priorities!

editing to ask, can you do a Saturday morning class? That’s what my kids did till they were older, after school will be tiring