Sea swimming for 9 & 11 year olds who are level 4 & 5 in pool grades?

[Stellanotbud]

My dc are level 4 & 5 in their swimming lessons. I'm very nervous about letting them swim in the sea. How strong as swimmers or what level. do they have to be to swim safely in the sea?

Gosh, we never had formal swimming lessons when I was a child and we were left to go bodyboarding etc in the Atlantic without any parental supervision around that age this was the 80s though, the pinnacle of shit parenting

If kids are actually swimming (rather than paddling) in the sea, they need to be accompanied by an adult that understands the sea, knows what a rip tide is and what the currents are doing in that location. Sea swimming and pool swimming are totally different beasts. Having a fear of the sea is healthy, it needs to be respected.

I also think a blanket “don’t go in the sea” rule is excessive- how will they learn otherwise? Though I do go on swimming holidays so might be biased. Can you swim yourself?

The Med is a very safe sea. Pick a beach with a lifeguard. Go in with them yourself. Keep them within standing depth, and consider a swim vest (we have this one) - downside is they can potentially float out of their depth, but you should be staying close enough to grab them anyway.

I agree with other posters that most kids run in to waist height, giggle/splash, and run back out. There isn’t much serious swimming going on. You just need to make sure you are close enough to grab them if they get knocked over by a wave or can’t get back past the surf zone.

@Saschka I agree with you that going from 'don't swim in the sea' to 'don't go in the sea at all' would be ridiculous. It's just that with that level of swimming ability (low), direct supervision in the water and staying in depth is the safe thing to do.

Yh I wouldn't stop them going in at all. That's ridiculous and they'll never learn. Snorkelling areas tend to be good. The front of the beach can be the most dangerous with big waves but as pp mentioned, the med is very mellow and safe. They just need to be mindful that a lot of beaches have steep drops where it suddenly gets super cold. A lot of beaches in the med also don't have lifeguards, esp little port towns in Greece etc. Just keep an eye on them and they'll be fine.
UK has really scary rip currents so it's best to be careful. There's lots of great videos available on YouTube from RNLI for kids if you want to show them.

Also depends if it's an RNLI guarded beach. We only swim with lifeguards on watch.

Proper swimming only if there's an adult swimming very near them who is confident of their abilities in water. When I was 10 my dad took me and my sister snorkelling. We were way out of our depth but in a roped off area. At the edge of the roped off area (but still well within the ropes) there was a strong current that was dragging out to sea around the headland. My dad grabbed my sister and threw her out of it, I managed to grab the rope and pull myself away and my dad could swim against it. We were all fine, scary experience though. In hindsight perhaps my dad hould have suspected there might be a current in that location but he didn't think about it.

I don't know if you are already near a beach but our local beach lifeguards run being safe in the sea courses.

To be honest I'd be wary about any type of open water swimming which wasn't properly supervised, at any age and any competence. On a beach I'd want details about rip tides, current, high/low tide, wave formation, where underwater hazards were etc etc!

But at that age very little 'swimming' will be taking place! Snorkels for the shallow.

Where are you going abroad?

Dependent on where you're going would depend on my answer.

Somewhere like feungirola coast in Spain I wouldn't allow them because it gets deep quickly and is quite large waves at times.

Mediterranean where it's shallow for about 25m outwards and no waves and not tidal I'd be much more happy for them to "swim" and be further away from the beach.

Some places even the nipple rule wouldn't work for me as I wouldn't deem it safe due to currents and tides.

But level 4/5 means they can swim 10-25m and so I'd be very aware they probably aren't strong enough technically to keep the,selves safe in anything but shallow non tidal seas.