Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 3 4 5

Original poster

To be totally fed up of swimming lessons

113 replies

User97532468 · 09/10/2018 22:57

Both DC have had weekly swimming lessons since a couple of months old. DS1 was really good and by 3.5 he was swimming without aids and had his 20m badge. At 4 he got fed up and stopped trying or was just not being challenged enough. We changed pool to a smaller group and he seemed to improve but then went backwards again. Had another recent change of teacher and pool and again little progress, he is however now loving swimming again.

DS2 has never been confident but is making good but slow progress.

The thing is I’m just so fed up of it all. The lessons aren’t cheap and whilst I do believe swimming is an important life skill why is it taking so bloody long to get them to a point where I think right we can stop lessons now and just take them on our own.

So I guess I’m wanting opinions on when you stopped or when will you stop swimming lessons? Also what is the best way of getting them to a decent safe levels without spending however many more years doing the weekly lessons?

OP posts:

BrokenWing · 09/10/2018 23:03

1-2-1 lessons. Cost more but within a few months (9 for us when starting from scratch) theyll be swimming with a great technique and won't cost more than another umpteen years in group lessons.

megletthesecond · 09/10/2018 23:06

Are you me?
Mine started in reception year and DS has now started secondary and still not finished sodding swimming levels. There's too much focus on perfect stroke technique (I don't care about dolphin ffs) and not enough on stamina or life saving techniques.
TBH I'm probably going to take a hit in the bank account and pay for private lessons for the two of them. I want them swimming endless lengths and learning life saving skills. (I've been ranting about this a lot over the last week ).

JeanPagett · 09/10/2018 23:07

Are you or your DP decent swimmers? We finally cracked it when we went on holiday for a week and happened to have the pool pretty much to ourselves. The kids found it much more relaxed and really seemed to "get" it. Both had a couple more lessons when they got back to polish up their technique but it was defiantly the holiday that did it.

Notcontent · 09/10/2018 23:08

I agree that one to one lessons are the most effective or very small groups with a good teacher. Also, there really isn’t much point, in my opinion, in starting formal lessons too early (before 4 years old or so). Finally, it really does take a long time to master swimming properly but I think it is worth it in the end.

megletthesecond · 09/10/2018 23:09

Oh, and I'll stop when they can tread water for 5-10 mins and swim for 20 or so. Enough to give them a good chance at getting themselves out of trouble.
I was amazed (and a bit worried) when I challenged them to tread water and they couldn't manage 30 seconds. I can still do it for ages without breaking a sweat.

Notcontent · 09/10/2018 23:14

megle - you can’t really build stamina if you are not doing the stroke properly. 90 per cent of the people I see swimming in the U.K. can’t do front crawl properly and look completely exhausted after a couple of laps simply because they are doing it all wrong.

Rebecca36 · 09/10/2018 23:17

Do the children not have swimming lessons as part of their school curriculum? I never organised any extra lessons for mine, neither did I have any and our swimming is fine.

Original poster

User97532468 · 09/10/2018 23:18

Glad I’m not alone. I think I’ll look into private lessons, at what point does treading water even come into it? I don’t remember learning it but can do it for a long time. Me and dh aren’t particularly great swimmers, not helped by me now only liking exceptionally warm pools so teaching them ourselves isn’t an option.

OP posts:

arethereanyleftatall · 09/10/2018 23:21

I'm a swimming teacher and I'm constantly trying to persuade my bosses to run more survival type classes for the many many people who can't afford umpteen years of perfecting their froggy legs.

megletthesecond · 09/10/2018 23:25

not They're fine with crawl and breaststroke, they even get the breathing right unlike me. It's the box ticking of having to do dolphin that slows them down. They can't move up until they've got it all right.
They're bored and I'm fed up with spending hundreds and hundreds and not having strong swimmers yet.

arethereanyleftatall · 09/10/2018 23:27

Megle - I'm afraid it isnt a good idea to do 'endless lengths' with wrong technique because of muscle memory. For sure, I'd include in my lesson plans, some stamina work. But up and down constantly, whilst for example breathing forward on frontcrawl, isn't doing any long term favours.

MollyHuaCha · 09/10/2018 23:32

Are your boys very slim by any chance? Mine are, and took ages to learn to swim.

One teacher told us that girls often learn faster as they carry a little extra fat around their hips/bottom and this gives them natural buoyancy. Tubbier boys will float more easily too.

My advice: hang in there. Swimming is really important. They'll get there in the end!

llangennith · 09/10/2018 23:34

Why do kids have to learn butterfly? No-one ever ever ever chooses to swim butterfly! It's totally disheartening to see kids having to achieve a certain level of butterfly before they can go up a level even if they're brilliant at other strokes.

I taught my DC and DGC to swim as I love swimming, and they're all good swimmers. I got to a point with a DGS when I though he'd benefit from lessons with someone else so he joined a swimming class, but although he was brilliant at the other three strokes he couldn't go to the next level as he struggled with butterfly. He refused to go after 6 lessons.

arethereanyleftatall · 09/10/2018 23:37

@llangennith
Most kids love butterfly, and they definitely love dolphin. I teach about 300 kids per week, and 95% will cheer when it's dolphin/butterfly time.

Biffsboys · 09/10/2018 23:39

My ds was attending group lessons for 2 years - he hated it , I hated it and I felt he learned very little. I put him into 1-2-1 and within 4 months he was swimming like a fish .
Yes the lessons are more expensive but way more productive.

llangennith · 09/10/2018 23:41

@arethereanyleftatall I'm sorry but I just don't believe you😂

arethereanyleftatall · 09/10/2018 23:45

I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but why would I lie?

hooveringhamabeads · 09/10/2018 23:50

I took dd to swimming lessons every week for about 3 years. The result was she can swim as well as a fucking brick. We went abroad for a month when she was 4 and by the end of it she could get across the pool by herself. I literally so no change in what she was like then and what she is like now. I have binned the lessons off as it seemed like such a waste of time and money as she wasn’t learning anything. I think I will invest in some 1-2-1 lessons at some point in the near future.

rosablue · 09/10/2018 23:53

I was thinking about this today, at ds's swimming lesson.

He is a skinny boy and definitely having problems floating - which means that he (and the other boy in the class who also has similar problems) are learning much more slowly than the girls in the class.

ds in particular isn't very well co-ordinated at the best of times out of the water, so while he tries really hard, he also ends up stopping a lot because he sinks/inhales water/just can't do it properly/can't float which I think can be disheartening.

REcently they spent a chunk of the lesson on butterfly legs. They only started breast stroke a couple of weeks before that and while that's a stroke (that now has a very different technique from when I learnt eons ago!) that he looked like he was beginning to have a chance of being able to do and stay above water for more than a stroke at a time, they've been and gone and done that, ticked it off and moved onto something else. Whereas if they could have left the ones that were struggling do breaststroke rather than something new, they might have started to get somewhere with breaststroke rather than coming away from yet another lesson feeling they can't do it (where the it is swimming).

TooExtraImmatureCheddar · 09/10/2018 23:53

DS aged 3 got kicked out of swimming lessons because he hated sitting shivering at the side in between turns. He was just too young for the format. He kept trying to get in the water when the teacher was halfway up the pool. DH and I both tried to make him behave and he just wouldn’t, and he was starting to hate swimming. DD was two years older and barely progressed either - we took them swimming ourselves a few times and she cracked swimming in her own made-up backwards breaststroke very quickly. DS is much happier in the water and much more confident and isn’t far off.

BackforGood · 10/10/2018 00:00

I struggle to believe that too arethereanyleftatall, and I've spent MANY an hour on poolsides over the years.

OP I guess the progress is slow because they started so young!
Most dc aren't really developmentally ready to take instructions from swimming teachers before about 4 yrs old. If they started then, then they would have been likely to pick up skills much quicker.

I think dc will often have a 'spurt' though - maybe when you are on holiday and they are in the pool all day, just playing, and that 'practice' makes all the difference. One of mine accidentally had week of 1-2-1 hour long lessons one half term. I'd booked her in for a week of lessons and there was only her and one other child the first day, then the other child never came back. that week made SUCH a difference, it would have been worth paying for the 1-2-1 if I'd had to.

buzz91 · 10/10/2018 00:15

OP treading water is required to be taught as part of the lesson plan at stage/wave 4, I believe, although it’s only 30 seconds. Other general lifesaving techniques aren’t introduced until stages 5 and 6, and these are very basic. If this is you’re main interest I would either start 1-2-1 lessons stating your interest in survival skills (although many swimming teachers will only know the basics are survival skills is an additional qualification), or leave weekly lessons and instead use crash courses during holidays (many pools offer this mon-fri course during half terms and summer holidays) to keep them water confident and look for any survival skill classes/crash courses becoming available that are a suitable age.

nolongersurprised · 10/10/2018 01:12

My Australian children have never received a swimming badge for distance, they move up a level when their stroke is considered good enough.

We’ve had lessons from when they were very small but I agree that there’s a point when they just get it. DD2 (10 years now) has loads of lessons as a preschooler, was the worst of all my kids at 3 and by 5 could barely swim a 25m length which is below average for here. By 6-7 years she just sort of clicked and now swims about 9 km a week for a squad, can open water swim in the sea and is on the school team. It does help that summers here are hot and most kids live in the pool.

I agree with crash courses and maybe just more time leisure swimming. Learning good technique is important but 4 is maybe a bit young. Could you have more fun swimming time and regroup with intensive lessons in a few years?

Kokeshi123 · 10/10/2018 01:22

Get a 1-1 swimming teacher, preferably one who will basically teach what you are asking them to teach (survival swimming, some stamina/length work, screw the stupid butterfly etc.). Do an intensive course over the next holiday. Done. No more swimming lessons ever.

helacells · 10/10/2018 01:57

Yep one to one lessons followed by 3 months holiday at my sisters house in the tropics, she has a pool so DD was swimming like a fish in days. Group lessons don't do much I'm afraid.

Flip

1 2 3 4 5