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.

I don't really have any advice but I would say don't lose all hope. It may yet just happen. DS sounds very similar to how you described your son. He has no interest in swimming or enjoying being in a pool or the sea and will probably always have anxiety with it.

We had the forced break from lockdown and covid. I couldn't say for certain whether it helped but it may have. I booked him in for a crash course in the holidays where they do an hour every day Monday to Friday and he moved up and went through the next stage fairly quickly. In that class a supervisor would get in the pool alongside the instructor and it helped. I wasn't sure we'd ever get here but we are. It helps that there seem to be other kids starting lessons older so he's not standing out amongst little kids.

My dd was similar, except she hated getting any water at all on her face.

What worked for her was very gentle swimming h lessons that some of her friends also went to. She was so happy being with friends in the pool she started putting her face in the water.
At 7, she spend every day in the pool in the summer. We found a kids pool that she felt comfortable in and suddenly she just started to swim.

I'm not sure that swimming is always the essential life skill that people think it is, not at age 6 anyway. Unless you have a swimming pool in your garden or live very close to a body of water, but even then a 6 year old would probably be supervised near the body of water... I do understand though if you have had a relative drown that the risk may seem inflated.

Anyway, my 7 year old is the same - flat refusal and literally no progress when we paid for lessons. I simply can't afford to keep throwing money at something he hates so we've decided to leave it for now. Swimming isn't essential, not where we live anyway, so we are going to wait until he's ready. Another year isn't going to make a lot of difference in my view.

No, due to not wanting his ears submerged.

Hi, I taught swimming for over ten years.

Face in the water - slowly slowly catchy monkey with that.

Get him to just blow bubbles in the water with his mouth just under the surface - both of you make funny faces and noises when you do it. This is the very foundation of aquatic breathing. He will be able to do a pretty decent paddle with his chin and lips in. I call this crocodile swimming, kids dont mind being crocodiles.

Then get him to deep water where he cannot put his feet down with good armbands on that offer full support.

Get him to push off from a wall so that he can experience travel in the water. It will encourage him to raise his bottom as his legs will be bent underneath him to push off. Can he do it on his back? is it faster on his back than on his front? Which makes him feel like a rocket?

Ask him to be rocket, ask him to be a pencil, can he point his toes as pushes of the wall, can he float still like a cloud? Can he point his toes and arms like a starfish, can he do a star fish on his back? Treat it all like a game

Just spend a whole session just floating, blowing bubbles and playing games, some pools will let you take little toys in. Take the pressure off it. Fully support him to float, even if it means you walking up and down holding him and him knowing you will not let go under any circumstances. Some kids do not take well to sink or swim style. 5 mins floating/ 5 mins games ect..

Focus on floating and just blowing bubbles through his mouth - both are the foundations of swimming. It sounds like he was never taught how to float.

He simply will not go on his back due to the ears thing which I don't really know how to handle. Up the nose I know sometimes is a bit uncomfortable but in the ears?!

Try him with ear plugs

Start in the bath? Perhaps first work on blowing bubbles with just his chin in the water and slowly build up. I suspect working on this in his own home where he is comfortable is the first step.

I'm really sorry about your cousin. I will be honest and say I think your perfectly understandable anxiety about this is not helping because it simply isn't a question of can't swim at 6 = can't swim as an adult. As with all things, anything you're desperate for your kid to do is the thing they simply won't do so I suggest backing off a bit.

I did find that having a 2 week holiday in a hot country with a private pool sorted my kids swimming right out. If they wanted to cool down they had to get in and once they'd got in and enjoyed it they started to be much more amenable to face splashes. We paid for this with a windfall so I appreciate it is not necessarily doable.

Could try it with a floatation device around his chest? Basically the aim would be to start with enough floation to keep his head above water anyway, and then learn to use his arms and legs to raise his head even higher, until the tops of his shoulders are out the water. Once he's learnt that skill, then reduce the amount of floatation gradually.

It's difficult to tread water for a long period of time without your chin getting wet, but you can realistically keep your ears and nose dry.

Get him a full face mask that blocks off his nose. Then start in the bath with water pistols or just some splashing. Make it a game. You're going to have to desensitise him step by small step.

I posted too early. You need to reframe this whole thing. You aren't teaching him to swim. That's not the issue. He has a sensory challenge. It's a very different thing. You need to go slow and silly and let him gain confidence without realising it while blocking off some the sensory issue with a mask. Does he have other SEN markers? Is he particularly rigid with other things? Other sensory issues?

I had this with my eldest - refusing to put head in water, refusing to go on back. In the end I took them for an hour each week myself in addition to their lesson and basically laid it on the line that they had been in the baby class far too long do they want to stay in the baby class forever, friends from school Now in stage 3 etc, there would be no holidays unless they learnt to swim and another hobby that they really enjoyed attendance would depend on how the swimming went the week before

In the end that did the trick. Might not be to everyone's taste to be so direct with their child but it worked

@Lotusplanes you asked about the ear plugs. We got them done via a friend of a friend but I’ve heard that places that sell hearing aids do them. You can also buy heat and shape kits, I think. Finally, you can add a band over the ears too, available at decathlon, but tbh I think the plugs do all the work.

I completely agree with swimming being a life skill but it depends where you live as to how urgent it is. Our school was close to the river and several kids fell in when with their parents over the years, so people in the town were very focused on swimming. Probably this varies.

He has tonnes of sensory challenges but, per my previous posts, as school don't see an issue any diagnosis is going to be difficult.

Schools are shocking some more than others at suggesting an assessment. You can push for one yourself through the GP. It certainly sounds like he should be looked at for sensory processing disorder if not ASD. School is only one part of his life and it's great that he is getting in there but high functioning SEN kids often do in the early years. Schools wait until they can't cope and they completely breakdown to refer in the later years which doesn't serve the child in any way. I'd go private if you can afford it. He's missing out on activities that should be accessible to him. Keep pushing OP.

Yes I agree that's what I was trying to say with my thoughts on trying to get an occupational therapists input.

My son has sensory issues among other things; very similar to yours based on what you've described (also other things you haven't mentioned), masks in school, but I am sure he has ASD and/or ADHD. What's helped us so far is an OT assessment and OT sessions (we went private for this, is that an option for you?) and contacting SENDIASS - every council has one. You have to keep pushing school I'm afraid.

At DS's most recent OT session I mentioned our struggles with swimming (v similar to yours) and she recommended a local swimming school that's good with SEND, she said they are sensory trained. So might be worth trying to find something like that near you.

Take him to a different swim school. At that age DD hated her swimming lessons and was making no progress at all, just clinging to her instructor the entire time. We switched pools and all of a sudden she was an incredibly confident swimmer! The one she was at beforehand wasnt well heated which was putting her off

I agree - but as someone who really struggled with learning to swim as a child I now swim every week. Perhaps a little time is needed.

When I tried to go private for a diagnosis I was told they would need a teacher to back up my claims. The observations of me, his mother, didn't seem to be good enough.

Hi I know this is an old post but would you mind sharing what ended up happening or what you ended up doing? Going through the same with my almost 6 year old.