Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think swimming lessons are the biggest rip off ever

74 replies

thinkingmakesitso · 02/10/2015 21:27

I have two dc and they seem to be so far behind their peers at swimming. One is 8 and the other 6 and they are on stages 3 & 1 respectively. Both seem to be stalling and I just hate the way I seem to spend so much time in a sweltering leisure centre, exhausted having rushed home from work to watch them half- heartedly pittling about in the pool. The alternative is to spend half the weekend doing the same. And that is without mentioning the expense...

DS1 in particular hates it and kicks off pretty much every fucking week about going. He does all that is asked of him in there, but just seems to be getting nowhere. Ds2 doesn't really focus, despite the numerous conversations we've had, and just seems to float around.

They had no lessons for 6 months last year after my marriage broke up and I was worried about money, and it seems it has set them back massively, though they've been back at it since spring. There is huge waiting list for one-to-one lessons and I don't think I could afford the amount we'd need anyway. I know I should take them more at weekends, but we have so many other things to do at weekends it is really hard to fit it in.

I may be over dramatic, but swimming seems to take up a large chunk of our leisure time, and should be taking up more. Will the end never be in sight.

OP posts:
Original poster
thinkingmakesitso · 02/10/2015 22:18

I would love to leave it for a while - but make more of an effort to go in free time. I work f/t so not a hope in hell of going before or after school, but as a teacher I could make more of an effort in the holidays and do intensive courses then.

I really don't see it as especially vital, but I don't want them to end up like me, and don't want ds1 to be embarrassed when he swims with school next year.

OP posts:
MrsPnut · 02/10/2015 22:19

Because to progress they need to know at least 3 strokes.

Dd had group lessons and we weren't happy with her progress and so she switched to 1-1 lessons for 2 terms and she progressed loads before switching back to group lessons for 2 years. We then decided she wasn't progressing again and switched to 2 terms of 1-1 again. The pool has closed and so we needed to move anyway but we have her old 1-1 teacher but in an improver group for a swim squad and we pay less for 2 hours swimming a week than we were paying for 30 minutes a week.

Original poster
thinkingmakesitso · 02/10/2015 22:20

Why do they need 3 strokes to progress? Progress in what way?

OP posts:
wonkylegs · 02/10/2015 22:21

It could be the teacher. DS is 7 and on stage 7 atm. He's progressed well since starting lessons at 5.5 except when he had a set of lessons with one teacher who was crap, he just really couldn't engage the kids. We swapped teacher and suddenly DS was back on track. He now swims for an hour once a week which at £4 a lesson I think is really not that bad and I'm careful which teacher I book him in with.
Early level lessons should engage the child and make it fun being in the water, once they've progressed a bit then it does get more serious but I think they can see it themselves and DS and his friends are now quite competitive and are more about 'winning' or being the best rather than having fun.

Iflyaway · 02/10/2015 22:23

Weird.

Complaining about the price of swimming lessons for children - sorry, don't want to get political - while people and children are drowning crossing the seas for refuge. WTF?!

One of the most important things you can do for your child is to teach them how to swim FFS! If it costs, so be it.! Be lucky you have a pool in the vicinity!

If you feel it's a rip off (would you work for free? No doubt these people teaching kids to swim are on a minimum wage, eh?) - You could always get in there and teach them yourself....

When housing is pricing out basic structures in place as in swimming teachers, nurses, teachers, first aid support, social care etc. THAT is when you should get worried. and furious!

dementedma · 02/10/2015 22:25

If they don't like it,don't go. Dd 1 could swim when she was three. Dc3 was 12 when he learned.

Original poster
thinkingmakesitso · 02/10/2015 22:28

Confused I could point out all the ways in which my op has absolutely nothing to do with the matters you have raised, but I really cba, except to say that I don't think those people drowned due to a lack of affordable swimming lessons Hmm. How ridiculous, if not offensive, to try to draw a parallel there.

And your last paragraph makes little sense, but you have no ide about my income, though I am a teacher, if that helps you

OP posts:
BertrandRussell · 02/10/2015 22:31

"One of the most important things you can do for your child is to teach them how to swim FFS!"

Really? Why?

JoyceDivision · 02/10/2015 22:32

Or, you could do what I used to do when I was little andget the foot stool out in the middle of the room in front of the tv, lie on it on my tummy and waggle arms / legs about practising breast stroke.

I think that's when I got put in swimming lessons Grin

Saz12 · 02/10/2015 22:33

OP not really complaining about the price, just that they're not working out for her.... did you read the post, or just the title?

Saz12 · 02/10/2015 22:35

... surely more important to teach them to be safe around water (eg, to get to the side, or a thing that floats, be wary of cold, and or currents, get feet first if in a river, etc) rather then to be expert at butterfly stroke?

Kayakinggirl86 · 02/10/2015 22:41

Does seem like you really don't want your children to learn how to swim.
I am a full time teacher but get my children up early 2 days a week and in the pool for 6:15. We love morning swimming as a family. But me and DH met through swimming. So maybe have a different view.

BoffinMum · 02/10/2015 22:44

I have taught all of my kids to swim. We did it by taking them on holidays where they could swim daily. As babies we played with them in the water a lot. At about age 3-4 I started teaching them to swim properly. First I taught them to climb out the pool by themselves away from the steps. I then encouraged them to doggy paddle with flotation suits on. Then I took off the suits and got them to swim a few paddles at a time, building up until they could do a width. After that they were fine. They are all pretty good swimmers with excellent stamina. Little and often is the way forward with swimming. Lessons are often too far apart for them to really get it.

Girlwhowearsglasses · 02/10/2015 22:45

Op I so feel your pain.
I have a DS with ADHD and DTs who never tire.

They are in different classes so I now have two afternoons where I have to corral them in crowded spaces where it's super hot and humid, make them change without fighting, stop them running in the changing rooms, wait in an oven-temperature viewing galley with whichever DCs not in lesson; then negotiate them getting dressed in a corridor because idiot parents leave all their stuff in the changing rooms instead of using lockers Hmm, and get them home super sharpish and fed before they expire with post-swim hunger and storm the kitchen (I give them snacks before swimming)

Relaxing it ain't.

Also being by a swimming pool in street clothing makes me feel dizzy - is that just me?

blobbityblob · 02/10/2015 22:48

Why do they insist on teaching them all these complicated strokes when they haven't mastered the basics?

I used to think that. Then wondered why they kept them for several years kicking up and down with a woggle without teaching them any strokes.

The school we have now - teaches them to stay afloat and move wth no strokes initially then gradually introduces the strokes and then refines the strokes. Different settings/teachers vary immensely.

Original poster
thinkingmakesitso · 02/10/2015 22:49

How does it seem that I don't want them to swim?? If that were the case I would just not take them to lessons. I have posted because I am concerned that the lessons are not working for them, not because I don't want them to learn.

I set off for work at 6.30am. No idyllic family swimming for us as our marriage is over and I have to fit these things in around work and access with their dad.

OP posts:
overthemill · 02/10/2015 22:51

I think it's important that kids learn to swim so they are safe around water. You don't need actual swimming lessons for that - I didn't (child of the 1960s) and our eldest 2 got taught by DH but youngest got taken by me to swimming lessons from 3 months old as I wanted her to be confident. She loves the water, feels it's her natural element and would go whenever she could. She did have lessons 3 months to 2 years then summer week long courses each summer from 5 as it was easy to do for me. But all the kids got taken every week to the family fun session for years and years ( until eldest dd started needing 2 hours to get ready before and after). I think you could take them out of lessons and just take them swimming whenever you can after YOU have had a few lessons to build up your own confidence

Mynameismummy · 02/10/2015 22:53

I honestly don't get the fuss about swimming - my DD's school is obsessed with it as well. It's important to know how to in case you're in some sort of accident, but I really can't see any point thereafter if you don't really like it.

BertrandRussell · 02/10/2015 23:34

I find it utterly baffling that people think that learning how to do different strokes in a swimming costume in a warm pool is going to be of the slightest use to you if you if you fall, fully clothed into a freezing, dirty, junk filled canal. Swimming lessons are the biggest marketing success since bottled water.

BertrandRussell · 02/10/2015 23:39

And too much confidence can be dangerous- the nearest either of mine came to drowning was when dd who adored the water jumped into the deep end of a pool aged 18 months, was hauled out still grinning and saying "Ise can wim ^under* ze water"...

notquitehuman · 02/10/2015 23:43

I wouldn't know whether they're a rip off. I'm currently on a nine month waiting list for swimming lessons for my DS. Luckily, he's learned a bit of doggy paddling from playing in the pool, but he could definitely use some proper guidance.

BertrandRussell · 02/10/2015 23:45

"but he could definitely use some proper guidance"
Why?

brokenhearted55a · 02/10/2015 23:57

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

TracyBarlow · 03/10/2015 00:00

I agree with you bertrand

It's seen as tantamount to child abuse on here if your child can't swim.

It's an essential life skill is it. Not for the kids who live around here and don't ever see the inside of a council swimming pool, never mind the bloody Atlantic coast. I think it's more important to have food and clothes.p than to be able to doggy paddle 5m across a generously heated pool.

My son goes to swimming lessons but im yet to be convinced it's worth it. I understand they want to get it 'right' but FFS he's been going for a year and his whole class still has noodles and flotation belts on. I only want him to be able to swim a few metres. He's never going to be Adrian bloody Moorhouse.

notquitehuman · 03/10/2015 00:00

Because I can barely swim myself. I'm not at all confident in water, and don't like going under the water at all. I'm the last person who should be teaching him to swim.