Please help me teach my 6yo to swim

[Lotusplanes]

Just that really. I'm in despair over DS's (6, Y2) swimming abilities. He's had lessons for over a year now and has made exactly 0 progress. All the other kids he started lessons with have moved to the next group and he is still in a class with tiny 4 and 5 year olds, all of whom are now better than he is. He doesn't go at school but aside from his lessons I go with him myself at least once a week. He likes splashing about in the water but he cannot swim - like, at all. He cannot keep his bum up and his legs sink, and the main reason for this is the fact he point blank refuses to put his face in the water - he holds his head up so high it makes the rest of him sink. He simply will not do it. He won't do it for bribery, as part of a competition, with peers, anything. He has a real thing about his ears and his nose in the water, pretty sure it is a sensory thing but nothing I do is helping. He will not even put his nose in to blow bubbles. We have tried swimming both with floating aids and without.

What can I do? What techniques can I try? I don't need him to be an amazing swimmer but I do need him to be able to keep himself afloat and be able to put his head under! We did a weeks holiday recently where he was in the pool every day and it made no difference.

You are welcome @Lotusplanes

The other thing I would say to everyone reading this is that it is NEVER too late either to learn to swim or to have some lessons even as an adult to improve your technique. The better your technique is the more efficient your swimming is which means you can swim further and longer. It's all about minimising your resistance to the water. A torpedo will go further and longer than a furry cat

The most important thing really is learning to breath properly because then everything else fits on top of that and can be corrected one thing at a time. If you've ever watched people swimming lengths of crawl up and down the pool and wondered how they do it - the answer is that they have mastered breathing which isn't difficult. It's just practice and getting out of bad habbits.

There are lots of classes around - classes for triathlon swimming are particularly helpful as open water swimming needs good breathing technique.

@Lotusplanes if you are going to a Uk leisure centre you would have to get special permission for a mask and goggles as they are against the normal rules (I'm a lifeguard).

Goggles with nose cover, ear bandit with earplugs. Take the pressure off and take him as often as possible with noodle and let him play. How is he at showers/bath, does he hate getting his hair washed? If he doesn't like water on his head at all I'd start with laying in the bath with very very little water

He kicks off about having his hair washed, always has.

Does he have other sensory issues at all? I'm just wondering if so if an occupational therapist may be able to help at all.

What about, you know those neck pillows you have on a plane or car journeys. Could you find a blow up one that he could wear in the bath/ pool. Might help keep his ears and face away from the water.

Yes, quite a few. I have ADHD myself and suspect some form of neurodiversity, but school insist nothing is wrong because he is well behaved and academically capable (story of my life, that's what I was like at school too).

I find this attitude so weird. Why force it if he doesn’t like it? Ease off. He’s 6. Go back to it at another age and stage. Perhaps try another sport that he can grow in confidence in.

Goggles?

It was a game changer here didn't like water in eyes.

Mine did too, the combination of lying in an inch of water in the bath and a great swim teacher meant that he overcame the issue with putting face in the water and hair washing simultaneously. Encouraging put not forcing him.

lots of picking up sink toys from the baby pool ie well within his reach to start with and then getting slowly deeper but still waist deep at most water.
lay in the bath front and on back

I kid you not one day he just jumped in the big pool and swam 5 meters plus to a float. Swim teacher and I had our mouths hanging open. This week he floated on his back for the first time with no float.

@Lotusplanes ex swim teacher here.

the issue is it sometimes does hurt for water up the nose and this is the fear.

Buy a cheap scuba diving mask and snorkel and play in the bath. Water can’t go up the nose and can breathe out through the snorkel, this will hopefully with some patience get him comfortable looking ‘down’ and head not so far up.

you can then take this to a pool he can stand in and play games, get those toys that sink, play what can you see etc. May need permission but loon for private pools for hire to get around this and have a family swim session.

then he needs to get comfortable with just goggles & a nose clip if needed to put his chin on the water. Once he can do that he can have a noodle round his chest and a pool float with straight arms out and kick hard, it’s takes more effort with face out so legs need to do the work. Then it can progress from there, if you turn the float around and have one arm straight / one bent holding the float stick his ear to his arm and kick that way too and eventually he’ll learn to swim. He needs patience and no pressure to do anything. I promise one day it will click, I’ve taught children who were prettified at 8/9 years old and with little tips and work at home managed to blow bubbles in the pool after 6 months with chin in the water.

Swimming is an essential life skill. I wouldn't make him do anything else he didn't want to but he has got to be able to at least float in water.

He has goggles.

Maybe I'm biased as I lost one of my cousins when we were young to drowning.

He has goggles.

As I wrote above, they must and need to be good quality googles that fully cover the eye and give a good seal so the water doesn't get in. Most goggles that you see for sale round and about are not big enough or good enough

See my Aquasphere link above ^

I'm sorry to hear that lotusplanes.

How about teaching him to tread water? That's naturally legs down and head out. And ease off on the rest for a while.

I agree swimming is a life skill, but there are plenty of adults that don't swim. It sounds like he knows to stay away from water.

He has the aquasphere ones, those were the ones recommended by his swimming teacher.

He will not tread water either. He will not go out of his depth as he is too afraid of his head going under.

I know too many adults who can't swim and don't want him to be one of them. For me it would be like not teaching him basic cooking skills or how to wipe his own bum. He's just got to, there are no two ways about it. Now or later, he has to learn.

Could you use a swim cap (which covers his ears) in the shower first so he gets used to the idea of the water on his head but his ears not getting wet, then try it in the pool with him on his back?
My ds was similar but nose plugs did the trick for him so not as bad as your ds.

He has a swim cap in lessons but it doesn't seem to help as the water still gets in!

And the swimming cap is a whole other issue as he freaks out about it being tight on his head. This is what I mean by him having multiple sensory issues. School either can't or don't want to see a problem. As far as they're concerned if he can spell and do his maths and not disrupt class he must be fine.

I'm currently having the same thing with DS, who's 8. He just won't put his face under water. I take him swimming once a week and we just float about, do some paddling etc. He's much more relaxed in the water now than he used to be, although still won't put his face in.

I haven't said anything about having to put his face in in order to swim - he's able to do a sort of doggy paddle to get from one side to the other, with a pool noodle, and for the moment that's what we do. My plan is to just keep encouraging him to lift his bum and legs up, and to help him keep enjoying the water.

He just can't seem to keep his legs afloat - how do you get them to do that?! He cant even do it with a float held out in front of him!

He just can't seem to keep his legs afloat - how do you get them to do that?! He cant even do it with a float held out in front of him!

It will always be a struggle to get his legs up if he is straining his head up and out of the water because of the weight/balance I wrote about above.

You could try a pull buoy which is a device that you hold between your thighs to raise your legs/hips into the correct position. It does raise your legs -for adults its a training device that helps you to learn to feel when your hips are high enough/legs high enough/ are in the right place.

They do make junior ones here BUT I would be careful with this and maybe speak to a qualified junior swimming instructor before you use it because it will pull his legs up so to be balanced you need to have your head down.

Without seeing him, I can imagine a situation where he has the pull buoy between his legs, so they get pushed up, he's still straining his head back to avoid head in the water, arches his back horribly and then gets into a mess as he starts to struggle against the discomfort. If you want to test it, start very very shallow end and get him to float on his stomach holding on to the side while you put it between his thighs for him to grip, that way if there's a problem you can pull it out straight away.

www.amazon.co.uk/Swimz-Junior-Pull-Buoy-White/dp/B078TKKG6M

Can he float on his back? If you are wanting him to swim because of drowning risk, maybe just get him to float on his back first as a stop gap.