If your under 8 year old can confidently swim 25m…

[needabreak5]

…do you think they should be allowed in the deep end at the local pool? Ours don’t allow it unless during a lesson, but over 8’s they will assess each time they enter the pool and allow if they can swim, even if they are clearly not a very strong swimmer. Shouldn’t it be based on swimming ability rather than age?

I do think it’s odd if they can swim and have a responsible adult with them. I totally understand testing them first, but I think it would make more sense that an under 8 should have an adult with them either way.

My Ds is 8 now but he was able to swim 25 m plus before that. He would be very disappointed if he couldn’t go in the deep end. Our pool is 3 m at the deep end and his favourite game at the moment is chucking diving sticks down to the bottom of that and giving them. It gives me terrible ear ache when I do it but he likes it!

I'm a lifeguard. Where I work, parents must accompany under 8s in the pool. Theoretically, they are also meant to stay at arms length of the child in both the shallow and deep end. In practice, we would only enforce this if the child was a weak swimmer or very young.

The reason under 8s must be accompanied os because their ability to make good decisions, assess risk, follow instructions etc is not as good. Therefore their likelihood of having an accident is significantly higher. For example, I have noticed that I can tell a young child not to run on poolside and 2 minutes later, they are doing it again. An
Older child is less likely to do this.

However, in our pool we would allow anyone in the deep end if we could see they could swim well enough. An ability to swim 25m would definitely be ok.

Perhaps there have been a few nasty incidents in your pool, OP, they have made the management nervous?

The pool we go to asks you what stage your at - need to be stage 4 to go in the deep end. If you don’t do lessons you’re stuck in the shallow end.

i too got my mile badge age 7, the lifeguards referred to me as an otter as I’d spend as much time underneath as on top of the water.

my 9 year is now stage 4, however if she is in the deep end she has an adult babysitting from the side if not in the pool with her. She nearly drowned herself in stage 2, but doing something idiotic.

my 7 year old is stage 3 and far more sensible….. but has no stamina so I’d not let him in the deep end unaccompanied even if he was allowed.

I've used a few pools and never known children be "tested"
They just do no non-swimmers beyond this point and I've rarely seen any intervention.

I did ask lifeguards if I was OK to use floats when I was heavily pregnant and weighing 50% more than usual. I can usually swim a mile+ but just needed the boyancy boost of a pair of noodles 😂
The swimming pool was the last place I was really capable of moving in. I stayed near the edge so it was easy to reach for if I had a problem. A bit different to being an actual non-swimmer.

@BogRollBOGOF. I often take a noodle swimming anyway. I'm a confident swimmer, but when I'm with the DC I prefer to just bob around the deep end whilst they bomb around. No interest at all in wasting energy treading water when I can let a noodle do it for me. I think I might see where DS gets it from now...