Swimming lessons - gazing into the abyss

[Carrotsurprise]

My god, how many years does this go on for? My DD started swimming lessons at the start of year 1 now she'll probably be moving up to stage 3 at the end of term. It runs for 50!!!!! weeks of the year. Every bloody Monday evening all year bloody round. And I'm on maternity leave! When I go back to work we'll have the juggling a toddler making sure one person gets home for him and the other goes to swimming. Then one day it'll be time for him to start lessons. Every Monday evening except Christmas, for like ten years? Right? Are swimming lessons really non-negotiable??

Putting her face in the water and having the confidence to jump in the shallow end are pretty basic critical things to be able to do, of course they stop her moving up until she can do them.

Ten years? Nope. Mine each did a block each spring and summer for three years and one did some in autumn once. The older two swim fine. Youngest is learning at the moment.

In my experience, most kids keep going until 9-ish, but it doesn't matter whether they start at 3 or 6, it all equalises by the end.

I try to get slots where I can go swimming at the same time, rather than sweltering in the viewing gallery.

Mine had lessons from babies until they passed their bronze medallion and both went on to do their NPLQ and both became lifeguards. It got ds through uni and when he was looking for his "career" job. They both missed lessons when they stopped!

However , i dont like the fact Swim.org now recommend 50 weeks a year. When DC went it was term time only and the occasional intensive week in the Summer. We needed the break and also it meant the pool wasnt open for recreational swimming very oftern.

I think it's easy to imagine xyz worked for my child or didn't and apply that to all children. I have 4, 2 of them swam early and learned quickly, one was more middle of the road and one found it so hard and need lots of 1 to 1 and years to really get it.

Children aren't all the same, your child being a great swimmer doesn't make you a wonder parent, your child struggling with swimming, or anything, does not mean you are a bad parent or that you've failed your child.

Having 4 who all had their strengths and weaknesses certainly taught me a lot.

Having said all that not all swimming teachers are the same and finding the right fit is also important.

Definitely not non negotiable. If your kids don't love it and you hate it then don't do it. My kids (now teens) hardly had any lessons outside of the school ones. But we went swimming just for fun lots at the pool and beach, and they can all swim well enough to enjoy the water (no perfect strokes or speedy times but they don't need these!)

I've said it before and I'll say it sgain, the swimming lesson industry has done a brilliant job of guilt tripping parents into believing they have to doend a fortune and huge amount of time on swimming lessons. It is not necessary.

I also think it's really shit that pools are now so booked up with endless lessons that there's hardly any time available for leisure swimming. When mine were little we'd go at least every couple of weeks just for fun. A friend of mine was telling me her 10 year old is swimming competitively and training 3 times a week. I asked if they ever swim just for fun she said maybe once or twice a year!! Poor child.

I can see that confidence in jumping into deep water is a nice thing for an adult to have, but why does a child (especially one who can already move themselves through the water, regardless of style) need to learn butterfly, somersaults and handstands?

Swimming is a desirable life-skill, but the fancy bits are largely unnecessary. If children and their parents want them, fine, but it seems on a par with gymnastics lessons to me.

Mine do all of these including sailing, paddleboarding on the sea, swimming in the sea, kayaking and have hardly had any swimming lessons in their lives. The most confidence and strength was gained from regularly having fun in the water as a family.

I think it depends if they enjoy them and are making good progress or not. If the answer is no, then take a break or consider another option. Personally, we will be taking the route of occasional blocks of 1:1 coaching with weekly family swimming, but we are fortunate to know a disproportionate number of swimming teachers!

The trouble is that there's a cycle where lessons are often the only way to access regular swimming.

Pool provision is down generally. School provision is reduced and not even. Pools like the regular direct debits of lessons so put those on rather than ad hoc attendance at general sessions, so there are few general swim sessions other than a couple of chunks at weekends.

We've often done casual swims at weekends and holidays, but not regularly enough to crack swimming with a dyspraxic child (the other is dyslexic with interesting executive function too, but more co-ordinated). It's mainly as a fun thing to support their interest in the benefits of being able to swim. There was a phase of awkwardly spaced lessons where we did a casual swim to break up the time, and the pool was surprisingly quiet. That session was recently dropped due to lack of demand.

The reality is that a lot of familes aren't avaliable 4-6pm because of work commitments. Those that are find it simpler to commit to lessons rather than casual sessions.

Pool timetables are a lot more regimented than they were 20+ years ago.
I used to be able to turn up to a "general swim" which had lane provision roped off and that ran all morning. The school lessons were held at the other swimming pool. Now the pool has been replaced with a modern complex, the other pool shut down and the pool's provision is very much segmented into school, lessons, lanes, aquafit, float fun, ninja warrior etc and there's little casual time when a parent could teach their child. And when there is a casual window, it's bedlam which isn't easy for a child. While lessons of 12 aren't a fast-track way to learn, at least it's orderly and everyone is working at the same tasks.

Then there's the ability of parents to teach. DH couldn't... he can't do much more than doggy paddle himself (never taught, lack of experience). I can swim but having learned late on, I can't necessarily extrapolate that into effective teaching for a child. I wouldn't have known to start with things like blowing bubbles to encourage breathing.

A lot comes down to aging infrastructure and poor funding in the past 15 years. Group lessons can be cost-effective per child compared to paying for a whole family. Our pool allows the DCs to swim for free at general sessions, so I only pay for myself for those. But to go as a family, there's not much change out of £20 per session. And that's a cheap pool. At the modern one, it's at lesst £8 per head per session which is dearer than the cost per lesson.

While we haven't fast-tracked through, our slow group lessons method has kept DS1 swimming weekly until 14. He's not interested in many sports, and at least it's been useful weekly exercise, and bonus, he's now a strong swimmer with stamina.

I feel your pain! I had 3 DC in swimming lessons over the course of two hours as they were all at different stages. That lasted around 4 years. In total I’ve probably done about 12 years of lessons as they all took it to advanced levels. I took a book to try to make the most of it. The pay off is they are all excellent swimmers now and my middle DC is planning to work as a lifeguard around school when she hits 16- the swimming teacher promised her a job so she is holding her to that!

I don't live in the UK - so it's not the same here.. I am shocked at how many people do weekly swimming lessons for years on end, unless this is a passion / sporting activity.

My kids can swim. For a few years in a row, between the ages of 5 and 8, we had a week of daily lessons, where they progressed significantly. When they were older, we had a few open water lessons and lessons in a 50m pool to work a little on technique so they could swim a bit better.

All three of them do other sports, two have participated in a non competitive triathlon event.

I'll agree on the butterfly.
I did google the benefits of butterfly when one of the DCs was whinging about it... it originates from breast stroke and while it's a bit niche, definitely beyond competitive swimming, it's apparently good for core strength and benefits other stroke development...
DC still did not fall in love with Butterfly

But the handstands and somersalts are useful water skills. They prepare for other water skills such as tumble turns if you continue swimming, or help dexterity for other watersports such as diving that you may take up or try out.
Also if you fell into water- eg someone barreling past you on a narrow tow path, you'll probably need to right yourself ASAP. The quicker your head is out of the water to breathe, the better. The big killer for "cold water" is not hypothermia, it's the temperature difference triggering a gasp. You want your head out of the water when that reflex gasp happens or you'll inhale water. If you can instinctively right yourself ASAP, that's an advantage.

Jumping in is a common cause of hot weather drownings because you're under the water when the gasp happens. Open water swimmers edge in gently and adjust with their heads very much above the water then go in fully when their breathing is settled.

As a non-swimming 6 year old, I slipped and went under in a deep paddling pool. Fortunately I managed to right myself and push up off the bottom immediately and was ok other than a bit of a fright. The shock means people don't always do what sounds obvious, so the more related skills are practised the better.

The early stages of blowing bubbles can be frustrating, but it's about teaching breath control.

Mine are well grown now, they had swimming lessons with school l think. But other than that l just took them swimming and taught them myself. They have manged not drowned. so far. Alot of the time l took them swimming in the sea, they know about rip tides and how to stay safe in the sea, much more important than being able to do perfect strokes.

Well it came as a surprise to me! They wanted her to fully submerge, not just put her face in. And fully submerge isn't on the checklist until stage 3. I can swim quite a long distance but I never do any breaths underwater so I didn't know that was important. Just goes to show that I shouldn't be teaching her myself I suppose.

This. ^ I can't get my head round it. Posters saying their kids took many years to learn to swim, others saying they're 3 years in and at stage 5, people talking about 50 lessons a year and what it's costing them, and it's been thousands of pounds so far. I am baffled. It's longer than a University Degree. Even learning to drive takes much less money and time and lessons than some peoples children are taking for their swimming. One poster said that her DC struggles to pick things up, and took 14 years to learn to swim. And one poster said theirs took 20 years! I am baffled.

Like you @Jujujudo - pre the year 2000 - everyone I know, family, friends, old schoolmates, my DC, (now in their late 20s,) their friends etc etc, all learned within several months. As I said, it's swimming, not brain surgery. Even children who weren't so academic and struggled picking some things up, managed to learn to swim within a few months. Taking multiple years, and 100s of lessons costing 1000s of pounds, is just like a parallel universe to me. Obviously happens as I'm sure people aren't making it up, but surely there has to be a point where you say 'enough is enough. I am clearly being ripped off here!'

And what is this stage 5, stage 6 stuff... Once they can swim a length, unaided, they can swim. After that, the parents can take them swimming 2-4 times a month, and they can develop the skill, and get some strength in their swimming. As a poster said, they don't need to learn butterfly and backstroke and fancy synchronised swimming. They just need to be able to swim. As I said, once they get the basics, anything else can come later when they go swimming with family.

Going to swimming lessons that are costing 1000s of pounds and lasting several years, or even longer, like 10 to 20 years, and going through stage after stage after stage is utterly bonkers. Parents are legitimately being ripped off, and someone needs to put a stop to it. Fact is, swimming needs to be in the school curriculum. It should be free, it should be for every child.

We do evening swimming lessons - we make it a fun family thing by going out for dinner afterwards somewhere casual/cheap. We take homework and get that done while we're waiting for food and it works out well. In fact I really look forward to our Monday evenings!

@BogRollBOGOF I'll take your word for it, but I’m sure there are a number of situations where the core strength, balance and agility gained from gymnastics lessons would also potentially be very useful - but not many people feel pressured to send their children to weekly gymnastics lessons for years.

I agree with you, but swimming is in the school curriculum in England, at least. All children are supposed to be able to swim at least 25m by the time they leave primary school and get a course of free lessons, incorporating different strokes and self-rescue skills. But the number of lessons is necessarily limited and getting a class of children to a swimming pool, them changing, having the lesson, changing back and getting back to school takes up a lot of time for a relatively short time actually in the pool. If the pool is not within walking distance it is also expensive for schools, who can ask parents to contribute to travel costs but not insist.

It takes forever because generally you have too many children being taught by too few, inexperienced teachers. Who often have limited to none class management skills.

Clearly this does not apply to all the teachers - but it does apply to a lot and the situation got worse due to Covid as the existing yea hers lost their livelihoods and had to go off and get different jobs.

It takes a lot of shopping around to find the teacher that actually times things so the kid keeps moving for the half hour lesson - rather than having 10 minutes of instruction and 20 minutes of fanning about while others swim. We had this problem for DD1 for6 months, in which time her ability went backwards!

The shortage of teachers also means many pools are grouping together a wider range of abilities, which doesn’t work well.

Large groups also inevitably have disruptive members - who take the teachers attention away.

So you get 10 mins per week of inadequate and disrupted instruction, and then the kids doesn’t even practice what they’ve learnt in the gap between lessons. If you are in that situation you won’t make progress and may as well burn your money.

We only got progress when I forked out for 1:1 private lessons. Term time only, with practice in the pool outside of term.

I have noticed actually that with people I know, those whose children started lessons early on are taking longer to progress through the stages. My dd started in stage 1 around 18 months ago and is almost at the stage of completing stage 7 now. This is with just one 30 minute lesson a week, yet she has friends who did the whole water babies/puddle ducks from being babies and started structured lessons at 3/4 and are still now only in stage 3 or 4.

Ask about using a nose clip. One of mine hated was the same and the teacher suggested it and then he was so much happier and more confident. In our pool they can use them for the lower stages.

They would definitely be useful too!

People tend to do sports and stick with them for enjoyment and some side benefits. They rarely have the aptitude and interest to become elite, but just enjoy the journey of doing them.

My DCs do karate too. Hopefully it won't ever need to be used for self defense. Mainly it's just good for their general health and keeping them off screens for a chunk of an evening per week. They've been plodding on at that for about 7 years now...

Generally people with the time and mony send their children to some kind of organised activities/ sports. I did dancing (badly) for years, but it meant when I learned to swim, I knew how to use my body, and it made learning other activities like yoga and aerobics easier and more enjoyable to start learning.

Just doing something is important. I was going to say that swimming is probably more beneficial than tap dancing, but then remembered that tap dancing technique helped me to improve my front crawl technique

Swimming was an important one to me because it was pretty shit being a non-swimmer in an area where the vast majority could swim. Likewise I was encouraging of bike riding because it's not cool to finally crack it at 19, and there have been social and practical times that I've been very glad that I hadn't remained a non-cyclist.

The swimming probably helped with the core strength to finally balance on the bike!
(I really should try a triathlon some day... despite being my 3 nemisis sports of my early teenage years 😂)

My experience would be that that would be almost impossible as it takes several months to cover everything on the list in each stage, and having to do it all at least twice, plus waiting lists for spaces on the next stage...

Looming back its all a giant scam that patents feel forced into as its a Life Skill.