Did you teach your own children to swim?

[Dogscanteatonions]

Having read another thread I realised my kids didn't have swimming lessons. From the age they were old enough to go in the pool (think it must have been 4 months or so) we always went swimming at least once a fortnight or so. Admittedly mine are nearly grown up now but I can't recall ever teaching them much, I just remember lots of messing about in the pool but they could all swim before going to school. Did they just learn by copying me as they got older? How odd I have no memory of teaching them anything!

I don't know how to swim myself, so I wouldn't have been much use at teaching them. Currently neither of them can swim, would have liked to take them for lessons but cost made that difficult, luckily DS is about to start lessons with school, DD will do the same when she's older.

I think some of these cases where families taught their children to swim would also have had school swimming lessons further along the line. I was taught by an uncle at 5 but went regularly with the school. Our school don’t do swimming lessons until year 5 or 6 so many people pay for private lessons as we have done. I was surprised when someone told me her granddaughter ( aged 8) can’t swim. I don’t think I know many other kids in that situation.

We didn't have formal lessons when I was growing up. I couldn't swim until I was about 10 years old (which, looking back, seems a bit lapse of my parents) but then we were posted abroad and lived on a compound with a pool. At that point my Dad taught me and we spent about 18 months in the water pretty much every day - as a result, I am now a strong swimmer.

'Messing about' in a pool with some pointers on better technique if and when it crops up, was definately the best way to learn. Including things like informal races, diving competitions, messing about trying to sit of floats etc. I truly love being in the water and think this is why.

My grandad taught me to swim. DM was terrified of water and determined that her dc would not be, but she was too frightened by the idea of us being in a group in the water without an adult next to us. So she splurged on a private swimming tutor, who taught us in pairs, the next-but-one sibling joining the class once the older sibling had learned to swim. It didn't quite work with me! I'm the second oldest, and the youngest learned to swim before me.

That summer my granddad took me to the beach almost every day and played in the water with me, getting deeper and deeper until the swell would just lift me off my feet. By the end of the summer I had completely lost my fear, could float on my front, surface dive and doggy-paddle.

Later I had group lessons at secondary school, where I learned 'formal' strokes.

We took our dc swimming from a few months old. As a result they never had any fear of water, but they learned to swim at intensive swim schools - every day for a week, rather than once a week for weeks on end. Only once they could swim did we enroll them in conventional once-a-week classes.

My dad was a coach but he sent me to lessons when younger.

I stopped around 6 when I could swim but did lifeguarding etc and then did swimming training with his friends club at a later age where they would help me improve my technique in an informal manner.

Ds started lessons when he was 4. He now trains 14 hrs a week