My non swimming child went under during swimming lesson

[Mamabear256]

DS is 4.5 years old and has just started swimming lessons, stage 1 at his local leisure centre. It’s 8 children per class, one instructor and a lifeguard watching 2 classes in the pool.

He’s naturally quite a shy reserved boy and he doesn’t like going under water, he doesn't love going but he does need to learn to swim.

Last week he had a trial, whereby he used floats the whole time. However yesterday, the first thing the instructor got to do was all of the children to doggy paddle across the width of the pool (a small-ish pool) without any aids or support. The instructor was standing a few metres in front whilst all 8 children doggy paddled at the same time. DS can barely touch the floor and he doesn’t even know what a doggy paddle is. It was inevitable he was going to go under, and he did. The instructor wasn’t too near my DS so I started to run around to get him. After a few seconds one of the mums shouted towards me ‘it’s ok he’s back up!’ I looked and the instructor had him.

Now I genuinely do not believe he should have been asked to do that without any floats. If the children went one by one doing it with the teacher next to them then I get that. But not all 8 at the same time, with the instructor not close to him, and especially as he is a non swimmer and can barely touch the floor.

I want to complain but just wanted to check if this is normal or not.

AIBU in thinking this isn’t right and to complain?

I didn't pay for swimming lessons until both of mine could actually swim because of a bad experience at a toddler swimming lesson where they sang nursery rhymes then dunked the kids....my ds hated it. We took him ourselves regularly and once he started to swim we went for formal lessons. Saved loads of money and he now competes for a local club against swimmers 2 years older than himself.

I have no idea if that's normal practice for learning to swim but my advice would be if your ds is upset by it then have a break and just do fun swimming until he is more comfortable being under water. Get some sinkers and take him to a shallow pool and just play in it.

I would complain.

we had similar recently , teacher expecting him to just swim across when he doesn't know how to swim!

i did Complain, and moved him to a different swim instructor. Turns out I wasn’t the only parent to complain and the instructor wasn’t following the curriculum

@C@Changeiscomingthisyear"
"In which case he is going to find lessons a real struggle. He needs to be playing in the pool and without arm bands, you can’t swim in them."
I agree.
As I can't swim myself, and school lessons were terrfying (1960s, 40 in class held by form teacher), I was determined my DC would learn to swim, so took them weekly to the swimming baths from when a toddler/ baby, so we could play around with floats and arm bands, and they would get used to the water and going under. All this before having proper lessons.

I mean this in the kindest way but I think you need to be careful not to project your anxiety on to him and make him afraid of water. You said yourself he could touch the bottom - barely or not he could touch the bottom and therefore stand if he needed to.
In Australia 3 month old babies learning to swim get their face put under - part of learning to swim is getting used to having your face submerged - in fact non swimming children learn to swim more easily under water completely as it’s easier.
The bit I found strange was he did a trial in floaties - do they really try to teach kids to swim in floaties these days? You can’t learn to swim in floaties - you need your body under the water to practise keeping yourself a float. It’s a different sensation - I am guessing you are not a confident swimmer because you think lessons can be done in floaties and they can’t.

Personally I don't think it's okay to put a young child that has hardly ever been in a swimming pool straight into formal lessons.

I've seen it many times at my dc's lessons, tiny children who are petrified of being in the water. I think it's really unfair to the child, the instructor and the rest of the class. The poor child is scared shitless. And it takes up so much of the instructors time so the other dc don't get their proper lesson.

IMO a child should be comfortable in the pool before they start group lessons. So the parent either needs to take them swimming (NO ARMBANDS!) regularly beforehand or pay for 1to1 lessons until their child is ready.

No wonder drowning is the leading cause of death for young children with attitudes like this.

Water is dangerous. It is up to the instructor to keep the kids safe in it. It is not safe for a non-swimming child who hasn't been taught any swimming skills to be under the water spluttering, panicking and ingesting water for a sufficient length of time that his mother, sitting away from the pool, notices and starts heading towards the pool.

@Mamabear256 can you swim? I ask because you seem very anxious about 'going under' when actually for the majority of the time when you swim your head is under water anyway only being lifted to breathe. Plus a lot of kids actually swim underwater better than on top of the water to start with.

My DH can't swim and used to panic at swimming lessons as well so he stopped taking them and I took them instead because they pick up on your anxiety

Honestly I found the 1:8 ratio kind of classes just weren't cutting it for DD. They had too big a range of abilities and confidences even in the 'beginner' class, and she got very little actual tuition time. I've moved her to a 1:3 ratio class with much more defined ability levels in the class and it's been like night and day. It costs £15 a lesson but she's come in more in two weeks there than six months at her council lessons.

I think I’d probably go 1:1 for a 4.5 year old who has no prior swimming experience and a nervous mum.

In my experience, all children’s swimming lessons seem to get them to go under quite often - my sons did at 12 weeks, one and two, regularly. None of them encouraged the use floats, as they are supposed to delay progress. He was doing a toddler swimming school and council classes for a bit as they overlapped, and they both did quite similar things - less “fun” in the council ones, and the council ones allowed googles, but those were the main differences. Both encouraged them all under.

Is he in a training pool? My 2.5 year old is not especially tall but I’d imagine will be able to reach the floor of the pool in the next half a year or so…

8:1 is a huge group with only one instructor for non swimmers.

Most places won't even teach/encourage doggy paddle as it's far more important to get the basics right with aids.

Any other swim schools you could switch to?

YANBU, my 4 year old is also nervous around water and doing stage one, that would have set him back so much! Ours have a tummy band on them while they learn, then that is switched to a noodle, until they can manage without. They have some time at the end of the lesson in the proper shallow end without the band on to get used to it.

Ideally possibly, but the swimming instructor should be dealing with each child based on where they are currently at, not where they would ideally be.

OP if you got to the stage of running to get him the supervision clearly wasn’t good enough.

And to those that say going under is part of the process: of course it is but not in an uncontrolled way at the start of the process for that child. This is how a fear of water develops. All the watering can over the head stuff and counting down to little dunks where they are brought up to smiling faces is completely different to a child going under in a manner that clearly felt unobserved to the OP and presumably to the child. A child in panic who can barely touch the bottom will not necessarily put their feet on the bottom. Yes he will go under again but it should either been in a situation where someone will grab him immediately or when he’s confident enough that he coughs up the water and keeps going.

OP Are there any private providers that run smaller lessons near you?

I'd really recommend going weekly with him yourself to build confidence too. We go every week with DD1 and build on what she did at her lessons and it makes a big difference.

I've taught hundreds of children to swim without floats. It involves teaching children to find the point where they are buoyant and float, which they cannot do wearing floats, and learning to breathe out through their nose when they go under. Your child was supervised and safe, he was probably more freaked out by your reaction than by going under. If you want him to swim, you have to overcome your own fears and tell him it's fine to be under water, just blow nose bubbles until you come up again.

No wonder drowning is the leading cause of death for young children

Don't panic the op with "stats" like this, it's irresponsible.

Children do not drown in well staffed public pools during a swimming lesson at neck depth.

The drown when they fall, unsupervised, into ponds or rivers, or in rip tides in the sea.

8 to 1, all doggy paddling with no noodles - no, that's not safe for absolute beginners. And going under in a panic will frighten him and put him off swimming.

He needs songs and fun games (splashing, blowing bubbles to get his face in the water, etc) to become comfortable, then progressing to kicking and jumping about in shallow water. Ducking under in an expected controlled way so that he learns about holding his breath, breathing out.

He should like his swimming lessons, not be terrified of them.

Do you swim, Op? Take him out of those lessons and either teach him some basics yourself or find lessons that will make swimming safe and fun.

Yes.
We were treated far, far worse during our "swimming lessons". ( Another country,
45+ yo).

What on earth is the point of this comment?

OP you are not over-reacting. The ratio for teaching is definitely less than 8:1 so I would check thie current swim England guidance and use that as a basis to complain. I wonder how many of the commenters above world actually sit calmly and watch their non-swimmer struggling underwater!

Surely asking them to doggy paddle is way beyond strange 1?? My dc doesn't even like water on his face, his lessons consist of splashing water on his face to get him used to it. And a very shallow end (ankle deep) that gets deeper. And 3 kids to one instructor. I would definitely not continue the lessons you have. I would do it myself if no other option, it'll be horrible if he had to overcome a fear of water too, not just learn to swim

I don't think you're overreacting at all OP.

My kids are 3 and 5 and they have lessons in large groups at the leisure centre. They do go under all the time, but the difference is they've has lessons since being babies where we were in the pool with them. A huge part of those early lessons was learning to confidently go under water, blowing bubbles etc. And we were right there ready to pull them straight back up.

I think you either need to be in the pool with your child for a few weeks or arrange private lessons until they're more confident in the water. Did the instructor know that this was his first ever lesson?

We paid for our youngest to have one to one lessons-best money we spent really and the first lesson was her putting her head underwater and getting used to it.made her a lot more confident in the end so if you can afford it then I’d recommend it.If not then take your son to just muck about in the pool with you -making it fun and then lessons

When you take him swimming yourself OP strap a shark fin float to his back. That way his arms will be free to move properly.

The only floats my kids used when they learnt to swim were the flat ones you hold in front of you. Never use arm bands. They are useless when learning to swim.

My kids were in the pool from babies but they still learnt at the same pace as later swimmers. My son also went underwater at a new pool aged around 3 despite me telling the instructor he was likely to do it. She turned her back on him and everyone was screaming at her that he’d gone under.

Different swimming school to above: When my kids were babies parents were in the water with them and as they got older the parents gradually stopped going in.

I carried on wearing a costume while sitting on the side as the instructor (owner of swim school) was a bit of a drip . Twice I jumped in to bring a kid above the water because she wasn’t paying attention.

Perhaps you need to take him to the pool more outside of lesson time? Children who spend time in the pool just getting used to being in water/playing generally tend to be happier and progress more in lessons.

It sounds like you need to do more fun swimming with him, without arm bands, for him to get the feel of putting your face down and floating to swim.

That said, my children skipped stage 1 as the teacher said its just acclimatisation and they could already swim at 4, they went to stage 2.

8 in a class is a lot, we go to a private place and there's usually four, 6 at most.