Why can’t everyone swim???

[GorgeousFox]

Am interested in understanding what is stopping children from learning to swim? Is it the cost, lack of facilities, time constraints, something else?????

That's because they've never fell into water.

When my kids were small I didn't have money to take them swimming, I couldn't afford the bus fare, I didn't have any spare money to buy swimming costumes, I couldn't afford to access the pool and I certainly couldn't afford lessons. For other people it's even more difficult - if you live in the countryside or in a town without a pool AND you have no money it's even more impossible!

My DC's primary school takes them swimming once a week for a year. DD's class got 2 weeks because of Covid! This could well be the only swimming tuition some children have access to- at least half her class were beginners. The. school even asked for donations of old/spare swimsuits, trunks and goggles.

Never understood the almost gleeful way people bring up that if you don’t know how to swim you’d drown if you fell in water. Yeah, duh. That’s why I stay away from bodies of water. And I hate to break it to you but people who know how to swim drown every day, especially if they fall into cold water.

I’d like to learn eventually (and I’ll make damn sure my kid learns) but right now it’s just not something I can afford to do.

I failed to learn to swim despite school lessons from y2-y6 which is more than most children get. It turned out that what I needed was a teacher in the water with me to show me how to swim, not stand on the side flailing around and yelling inauduably against the background noise of everything else in the pool. I learned at adult lessons at 16 and basically had a 1:1 for a few months of getting the basics, took 4m to swim my first 25m, 11m later my first mile and I'm now a keen open water swimmer.

DM never took me swimming and rarely entered a pool because they were cold 🙄

Because of this I prioritsed lessons for my DCs being fortunate to have the time, money and transport to make it work. DS1 is 11 and still limping through on stage 6 having been since 5m old and doing formal lessons since Foundation at 4 years old. He has ASD and dyspraxia. He's competent and I'm happy to let him loose in a pool, but I still value that commitment to weekly practice.

The provision of public sessions for children is generally dire. There are few open sessions. The pool we go to has 3x 45min slots at a weekend. A couple in the week. It's in a different LA which means our holidays don't overlap with their additional holiday timetabling so lose about a third of that provision through the year.

Our LA finally has a new pool but can't operate to capacity because of a lack of qualified staff because there wasn't the provision to train swimmers to do lifeguarding/ teaching for so many years. While children have learned at private pools, they tend to stop expensive lessons at 25-50m and not progressing onto further skills.

I find it odd that unless you physically can't get to a pool parents would seemingly not consider it such an important life skill?

A bloody expensive life skill. Even if you're just going for fun, it's still not cheap.

Where I am, it's £6 for adults, £3.50 for children, for a 50 minute session. So, minimum £9.50 a go if you have one child. That's a lot of money to find on a regular basis.

And that's before you factor in the cost of transport (bus, train or car), costumes for all the family, goggles for small children etc.

Lack of accessible lessons for children with SEND. We’re fortunate enough to have a special session at our local pool, but it requires a parent to be available to go in, which is one potential barrier. There is another at a public pool in the nearest big town that we tried before our current one started and it was a disaster - three lessons in one pool going on at once with huge amounts of shouting and echoing noise. It made me feel overwhelmed, never mind a child who struggles to cope anyway! So there’s another possible reason for you.

Never any class space when ds was young, and by the time they contacted me to tell me there was a space for him, I was back at work and he was in nursery. No other spaces and back to the wait list. He's now 3 and dh takes him twice a week for half hour once after work and once on a Saturday, he's learning. But not at the pace he would in structured classes.

My ds2 took years to learn how to swim. In the end we got one to one tutoring for him in a private pool. His instructor said he'd never seen anything like it, that he swam like a brick. Cost us a small fortune to get him to the point that he could swim a little and float in an emergency.

One of my kids swims one is learning with council lessons we do a lot of watersports/ just wild swimming in the summer. So it's a skill I thought they should have for safety for one. Quite a few of my extended family members cant swim but they are not interested. It's not the be all and end all it depends what your hobbies and interests are.

Firstly you need lessons which are super expensive and fully booked. Even if you have parents who can swim and who care enough to teach you and can afford to take you, the pool has so many lessons that there are very few time slots for family swim.

Secondly you need to get to the pool. Which costs several pounds bus fare or you need a car.

My local pool is fully booked for lessons and the only family swim times are 1hr on Sat and Sun lunchtime. So I have to drive my kids 30 minutes to another pool which has more family swim slots. It costs me £17 plus petrol to take two kids swimming. I can’t do that every week.

See I also have twins, but when they were little the rules at our local pool was one adult per child under the age of 5 (I think. Under a young age anyway). So I couldn’t take them on my own, and I worked Saturdays so couldn’t go then. We went a few times on a Sunday but not regularly.

i have three now and they can just about swim but need more lessons tbh.

And sorry OP I didn’t answer your question. We were also on the bones of our arse when the kids were little so couldn’t afford lessons.

Never learned to swim but did learn not to fall in deep water. I'm like an old fashioned seaman, if I'm unlucky enough to end up overboard, I want the drowning to be over quicker thanks.

At the beginning I was taking one per time to local council run pool. Later around age 2 I invested in private country gym golf club they had paddling pool and small pool for children and very good showers, changing rooms.
I was lucky because I wasn't working full time. It is difficult with 2 in one go.

A variety of reasons, cost, time, transport issues, lack of spaces, lack of inclination of the parents - it's not necessarily a priority too young, my elder dd didn't do lessons until 9 (seizures so had to wait until a year seizure free for lessons) and learned in 6 weeks. Dd2 was 6 and it took months

@MostTacticalNameChange I was just going to post something about that. I can't really swim and have never understood people who say you just float? I sink like a rock every time and always have. I went swimming for the customary term with school and occasionally in spare time while growing up (my mum didn't swim as a child for cultural reasons and has a fear of water so never went and my dad died when I was small) and got to do a few strokes of wonky dog paddle but that's as far as it goes. I couldn't manage a width of a pool. Ds's 1 and 2 are naturals and swim really well, DS3 is like me and just can't get it. Now it's really expensive at over £10 a trip for me and two youngest DC. Not affordable to people who are struggling.

Haha. My grandad was in the Merchant Navy in WW1 . Many of them thought it was bad luck to learn to swim as the aim was to stay out of the water. As a non swimmer I have always stayed away from deep water myself.

I'm a fully grown woman who cannot swim. We couldn't afford it growing up as I was raised by a single dad working 2 jobs. I was either at school or my nans. Then once we could afford it I was in glasses and couldn't see enough to do it which made my fear of the water worse.

Both my children can swim now. I wouldn't let my fear stop them

Kind of a stupid question but I'll bite.

We take them ourselves and watch YT on how to get their skills up. The thought of spending my evenings at a swimming pool is torture for the cost when schools do the proper lessons in Yr 5 here too. I can think of better ways to spend time and money on extracurricular plus, our swimming pools are easy to book into for a free swim session for families.

This also stems from a real genuine fear that if they were excellent at it, I would have to go more and I just can't bear the tedium.

We have a goal to get them to the stage of swimming a full length in front stroke by year 5 and we are on track with that.

The school curriculum requires that children can swim 25m when they leave primary school. How many schools do you know take the time to teach children to swim? Ofsted don't check on it so why bother?

I was taught to swim at school so was my dp. We were taught enough to build confidence and to continue to learn ourselves.

I'm really impressed how many people on this thread seem incapable of imagining that many people are never anywhere near deep water, so this just really isn't an issue.

I live in London. I'm not accidentally falling into deep water unless something blows my train into the Thames, at which point I don't think being able to swim will help much.

I can't swim much and lessons have died a death around here since covid. I wanted him to go as soon as he could with DH but due to lockdowns, instead of being at two weeks of age, the first time he got into a pool he was 17 months old. The lessons have bizzarrely thundered onwards with the same age limits as pre-covid, so he's already too far behind to start water babies/aqua tots lessons for his age group. We take him to the pool often, but he hasn't learned how to swim.

I felt rushed and panicked a bit when at school, then the tutor gave up teaching me, so I just kinda splashed about during lessons