To buy a buoyancy aid instead of a life jacket?

[Summersunplease21]

Wise Mumsnetters, I need help with a holiday question. We are going to the French coast and will be swimming/SUPing at one of the surf beaches with lots of waves and currents. Currently struggling with what the buy the DC (7 and 10) for the water. Research gives me conflicting info- a life jacket is better but also hard to swim in but still recommended for open waters. If it’s too bulky and annoying they won’t want to wear it. Am leaning towards a buoyancy vest, is this the right call?

A good buoyancy aid is required for supping. Go for a good brand, like palm and make sure it is correctly fitted and adjusted However you'll probably only be able to paddle on the sea if it's flat or upto about 1ft and in very low wind and preferably onshore. I get out on the sea once in a blue moon because it's rare to find the right combo of conditions on my local beaches.

You might be better off doing body boarding.

If you’re down on the Atlantic coast, Biarritz area, I would take lots of care and caution over which beaches you pick. Many are entirely unsuitable for children (and intermediate adult swimmers) due to the strength of the current and waves.

I’m from the area and every year there are tragic deaths. I don’t want to spoil your plans, but just advise you to take care.

Whatever you do, please make sure it's rated correctly for their weight. I naively bought a buoyancy aid for my DD1 at a supermarket when she was young. It completely tipped her face down in the swimming pool. She couldn't move. It was incredibly scary, even though we were only a metre or so away. We had to lift her out of the water. I'm sure it was a very effective aid but it was just too buoyant for her body weight.

Thanks. We plan to go to a suitable swimming beach along the coast but even the calmer beaches along the stretch concern me. I was not entirely clear in my OP but was more making the point that the waters can be dangerous rather than suggest I am taking the children swimming at a designated surf area. The SUP aspect I have reconsidered entirely and will stick to lakes for that one.

I wouldn't claim to be an expert, but we sail, and we wear lifejackets on the boat when falling in the water is very much not supposed to happen. Though in fact in bad weather we have always insisted everyone is in a harness and clipped on as picking up a man overboard is pretty difficult and it's much better not to go in in the first place! But for anything like dinghy sailing or windsurfing where getting wet at some point is almost inevitable then we have always worn buoyancy aids and I have never seen anyone do otherwise.
A life jacket is only of use if it's inflated and as others have said, it's not designed to really swim in. Trying to right a dinghy and get back in it with an inflated life jacket on would be a nightmare and I imagine it would be the same paddleboarding. Not to mention the fact that you'd need a large supply of life jackets or be willing to spend a long time deflating and fitting a new CO2 cannister every time someone fell in in a self inflating lifejacket. And I agree with the PP who said that you do need self inflating for kids. I have a self inflating one myself now after I did a training exercise and discovered just how difficult it is to find and pull the toggle when you are sinking in freezing cold water and I wouldn't expect a child to manage that.
For an activity where you are likely to fall in but not be very far from your boat/board and need to swim back to it then I'd say a good quality buoyancy aid is the right tool for the job. Just make sure it's the right size, and personally I always prefer those straps between the legs. One of my DS's is very thin and once when we were wearing hired buoyancy aids on holiday his shot right over his head when he capsized as there were no leg straps. When our kids were little we had the buoyancy aids with collars to make sure their heads were supported but if I recall rightly the normal ones were OK from about age 5 or so.
But the first rule of water safety is really to avoid having an incident in the first place so I'm glad to see you've reconsidered your plans somewhat OP. Sticking to lakes for your paddleboarding sounds very sensible, though don't get complacent. There were several deaths last year on one of the lakes we go to regularly because people thought "it's only a lake" and went out poorly prepared.