To teach DS to swim myself and forget the teachers?

[witherhills]

I'm sick of it
Five minutes of the lesson wasted while the teacher talks to parents of the previous lesson about their precious child, while I have to hold DS back from jumping in
Dilly dallying in the middle of the pool to flirt with the male instructor
Not actually being able to manage the children if they are a bit distracted
Just doing the same thing over and over

Or should I respect the fact that they are the trained professionals?

a) it's surprisingly hard to teach your own children how to swim. I've tried. I don't know if it's hard to teach any child to swim, or just one's own.

b) there are good and bad swimming teachers. Some are amazing, some spectacularly crap. I've abandoned at least 3 different teachers over the years on the basis that they seemed to achieve nothing but managed to shout an awful lot. Ask around - get recommendations. The good ones are very good - but you need a small adult/child ratio.

I'd change teachers. I'm a trained swimming teacher (although not teaching swimming at the moment) but my DD still won't let me teach her, so she goes to lessons. Up until 4 or 5 years, I would say just take them yourself but then they need some instruction in strokes to become competent swimmers and that is best done in lessons. I'd definitely be looking for another class as sounds like your swimming teacher is taking the piss.
Look for a low ratio of teacher to child. I prefer someone in the water for the beginners class and a friendly atmosphere. In my DD's beginners class they probably do about 20 widths in half an hour as they try to keep the kids moving as much as possible. However beginners classes are always a bit repetitive.
We use a private club but the local council lessons have a good reputation here as well.

maybe you just have a bad teacher.
,
ours are great and have done wonders with ds1

Yeah, I found dd's progress painfully slow at the local pool's swimming lessons.

Dh bought a book called 'How to Teach Your Child to Swim' and basically taught dd to swim.

She still goes to the lessons though as they do no harm.

Actually YANBU. DH taught dd1 to swim (I can't swim ). ANd although she has lessons after her had taught her, TBH she didn't really learn anything he hadn't already taught her, so we stopped them. He'll be teaching dd2 too.

I think it depends on your child TBH.

My two were taken swimming a couple of times a week from when they were babies - just a fun splash around. It then clicked with both of them around the age of 5. Just one of those things that they do when they are ready IMO.

My 3 (11, 16 and 18) all swim well and have never had a lesson. It can be a money spinner preying on parent's fears of water. Both DH and I grew up by the sea and learned to swim by watching other kids ,as our parents did before us. Where I live (Oxford) parents are obsessed with their children learning how to swim.
We took ours to the local pool and let them get on with it.

YANBU. DH taught DD - she can do a few lengths and retrieve her dive sticks from the bottom of the pool. She's confident and happy in the water, which is what I want at her age.

We'll probably put her in lessons/club when she's older, to improve her strokes etc.

How old is your DS?

I taught dd because she wasn't getting on in lessons.

Advantages - it was free! And I could work round her distractedness/not paying attention (later clicked that the problem was that because of her shortsightedness she couldn't actually see the instructor well enough to follow the instructions )

Disadvantages - she is extremely competent at breaststroke / backstroke, which are the two strokes I swim. I was only thinking to teach her well enough for safety / fun swimming, so didn't think anything of it. As it happens, she later wanted to join a lifesaving club and had to be able to swim competent front crawl, so then had to almost relearn in order to do that.

With hindsight, I would have supplemented our swimming sessions together with one to one lessons. Although they're expensive, the progress dd made in just a few lessons was really dramatic. (And bought prescription goggles sooner, obviously!)

Do you have a competitive swimming club in your area? They will often have a beginners' 'ducklings' group, that will be taught by experienced coaches/teachers - maybe even with older swimmers helping out in the water.

There tends to be more of a genuine aim to nurture any latent talent, along with teaching correct technique from the word go.

However, competitive swimming clubs are in the business of finding future champions - beware of this if you don't fancy getting up at 4am for the next 15 years

we never had one single swimming lesson.

dh taught all ours to swim. You can do it easily yourself if you wanted to.

Agree with Hassled it's surprisingly hard to teach your own child to swim.
I too got fed up of the endless group lessons where DS hung around waiting for his five minutes and I had a toddler to wait with.
I paid extra for one to one lessons and he learned more in the first lesson than in 2 years of group sessions.
Result - child swimming in no time and fewer lessons.
Best value for money I spent.

My dad taught me to swim and it's one of the great memories I have from my childhood :) I think I'll teach DS the basics and then send him to lessons later one when he's more competent to hone up his skills. I wish I'd had some good lessons as a teenager as I'm a good swimmer but I could be a lot better with a tiny bit of coaching but I'm too old now I think!

Mum taught the four of us to swim, and I have taught dd. 'Tis very doable.

I am getting a bit antsy at spending 30 minutes watching DD do two lengths of a small pool, clinging to numerous gimmicky floats and spending the rest of the time watching six others to do the same. I reckon out of half an hour, she's only swimming for 5-10 minutes and that's being left to do it wrong, most of the time.
But my options are limited, the nearest public pool is 15 odd miles away and packed solid at the weekends.

How much would everyone expect to pay for 1:1 lessons? I think I pay about £70 a term for 30 mins a week in a group, school holidays not included.

Depends on the child. My DC would not be taught to swim by my DH. She just wouldn't. So we send her to lessons. 3 children per group.
If your child will be taught by you then great. But a lot of children can be awkward so and so's when it comes to being taught anything by their parents.

Sue - I think 1:1 lessons are very expensive, but the consensus seems to be that you only need a handful and your child will have learnt way more than in a term of hideous lessons.

My children both learned to swim from the age of 3 and their (state) schools had swimming pools. I have never been able to swim and would like to learn, preferably one-to-one. Where would I go and how much could it cost, please? Or even what would it cost to be in a small class?

Here they are £15 for half an hour, IIRC. So definitely not a cheap option, but I found 2 per half term plus weekly swimming with me helped dd sort her strokes out. (ie, cheaper than a half term's swimming lessons)

I'm not sure it would be such a good option if you couldn't take your child for practice in between.

Sorry, that post was re. 1-1 lessons

Empty nest - our leisure centre has all sorts of options for adult classes, including group lessons and 1-1 (latter is same price as for children I think). I'd just ring your local pool and ask them.

Thanks . Maybe that's the key to success OP - it depends on how much practice you can do.

OP's experience sounds awful. I wouldn't blame her.
I would be terrible at teaching DC to swim & I have to say that their group lessons have allowed them to become much better swimmers than they would have been otherwise (I have no doubts). Most of their private teachers excellent (bog standard local leisure centre). The swim lessons with school aren't so good, probably adequate but more basic standard.

Thanks so much for your responses.
It's so frustrating and I really hope I'm not being pfb about it.
DS has just turned 4 and he can actually swim a bit, loves the water and has no fear at all. Jumps in like a loon.
Went to baby classes which was just an activity, but has always done what was asked of him.
He has had 3 different teachers in the last 6 months, first lady was great, older lady, but she doesn't do weekends.
Then a crash course, 4 children, one teacher. They ran rings around him. He couldn't control the ones sitting on the side and my DS was the main attraction but he still did everything asked when in the water.
Now this younger instructor who adores DS, but still have the problem with other parents taking up her time. And for some reason DS
has started screaming for me for for the first 5 minutes, so much so that she had to ask me to leave, this is so unlike him. He's absolutely fine then.
Usually only 2 or 3 in the class but somehow it just seems really slow and interrupted
I feel like no-one gets the encouragement/incentive right.
And he really hasnt moved forward in 6 months
I've seen so many lessons and I reckon I could replicate what they do, just might struggle to keep his attention for half an hour
I might look into the private lessons just to get him over this inactive period!
If not, I'll give it a shot myself. I was taught by mum and dad at about 7, but then went for proper lessons when I was much older, about 14 so I think my strokes are pretty good.
Maybe I should actually train as an instructor?! What does that entail then?

"teach child to swim"
"teach child to listen to person I openly disrespect while I sit texting at the side"
OR
get in the pool with children a couple of times a week, let them meet friends and let them LOVE being in the water.

my kids are both FAR better swimmers than I (according to a friend who is a team coach) - in year 4 swimming both were in the top groups
I've never paid for an out of school lesson in my life

and the coaches at my club agree that my method is FAR better than the 'hands off' delegation