To let DS stop swim lessons?

[user1478188491]

DD age 8 has just completed Stage 4 (swim England) swim lessons and it’s been a struggle for a while to keep him motivated to go every week.
He can swim confidently and strongly and swim 25m backstroke and front crawl with good breathing technique.
If anyone is familiar with the system of the swim England they go up in Stages in percentages, it took a looooong time to get from 80-100% on stage 4 and he was getting disheartened each week realising he hasn’t moved up any percent.

Would it be irresponsible to let him finish now?
Or would it be ok to stop?

I am battling with the mental ‘It’s a life skill non negotiable’ view that comes with swim lessons however he can swim and unless they want to be in Galas or competitions is this enough?

WWYD?

I would keep going.

The arguments for stopping just don’t stack up. People say ‘he can do 25m, that’s enough to get him out of trouble/to the edge of a pool/boat’. It’s really not. That’s 25m in ideal conditions. If he is ever in trouble in the pool/ocean, he will likely be more exhausted already, there may be other children to save first or he will be having to swim and then tread water or vice versa. As someone said above, being able to swim 200m in ideal conditions, means you could be confident they could do 25m in an emergency.

’Butterfly isn’t an essential life skill’ - no, but now is algebra or languages, but it isn’t about that. All learning is about training your mind to think, and/or better handle other problems. In this case, learning other strokes has a benefit - butterfly uses so much more energy, if you can do 200m butterfly, you are fit enough to do far longer in the other strokes. Also backstroke is useful if you are in an emergency, you can swim freestyle and get exhausted, you can switch to backstroke for a short time and still make headway, but gain your breath back.

He gets discouraged - yes he will. And he will many other times in life. When he fails an exam, misses getting into a sports team/uni course, when a girl/boy he likes breaks up with him. Your role isn’t to protect him from the disappointment or discouragement, but to parent and give him the tools to get through it. Perhaps this is a good moment for later - in future he struggles with maths, you remind him how he struggled with swimming but he preserved and passed all the courses.

I say keep going. Remind him when he is 18 and wants to take a gap year to Australia, he’ll want to run into the ocean with his mates. He will not want to have to stay waist deep or return to shore (or be rescued by a lifeguard) as the strong waves there mean being able to swim for 25m is nothing.

I think you have a somewhat unrealistic idea about what children learn in their weekly swimming lessons!

25m in a calm pool is incredibly different than 25m in the sea/ocean with no sides.

TBH @user1478188491i’d stick with it for another while.

Mine passed stage 4 last week and I don't consider them a competent swimmer at all! Can your child definitely swim 25m confidently? Because that isn't a stage 4 requirement so they won't have been assessed on that.

I’ve just cancelled my ds’s lessons with swim England . I’m going to take him for myself for a while and see how we get on but I have also found some lesson elsewhere which are a bit cheaper. At £50 a month and the rate he is learning it could take years and £1000’s to get him anywhere near competent .

Stage 4 isn't enough. The end of stage 6 is better....we slogging through stage 5 at the moment. Needs to be a strong swimmer that can swim the whole pool. 25 meters is not enough

More swimming lessons will not help that. All the things kids need in an emergency are not taught in swimming lessons. Falling into a pool? Possibly. Practically any other water based emergency? Nope. And will produce a false sense of security.

My son absolutely hated swimming, it was a real chore for both of us, but like you, I insisted that he get to a certain standard that he had the life skill and would be safe.

At the age of 24, he has got into triathlons, has researched strokes, breathing techniques etc and is now a pretty good swimmer. Never saw that coming!

So my advice, leave it now, he can go back to learning more later if he wants to.

Like @TheNightingalesStarling says, the stages are not all that standardised. My child moved swim schools and went down 2 stages. Stage 4 is particularly variable, if anything.

If you have the funds and would be happy for him to carry on for a while longer in group lessons, then here's my advice. Pull him out and buy about a term's worth of private one to one.. Then he can stop. You'll get so much more progress this way than grinding out several more terms in group lessons.

I think PP's milestone of about 200m is a good one, so another idea is to let him stop but continue to take him regularly to build up his distance. But if he's only doing a length or three at a time he still has some way to go to be comfortable swimming distances sustainably.

I'd stop.
Swimming lessons seem a bit of a fad or scam tbh to me.
Your child can swim...it's about exposure to water and water based activities that build confidence and stamina not a weekly lesson.
Both my very confident swimming daughters never had a lesson. I took them swimming once a week 1:1 and we went often to the local pool with friends so they could just mess about and play in the pool.
We always had holidays involving a pool and lots of trip to the beach.
If you can't find the time to take your son regularly then maybe lessons are worth it but it sounds like he'd enjoy a regular Saturday morning trip to pool with you more.

I always find these threads interesting. I’m a pretty poor swimmer, I never really learned as a kid and although I can swim now, I’m not really water confident and and am perfectly happy with just some lengths in a pool. However that’s made me very risk averse around water and cautious as I know I’m not a great swimmer, so I don’t ever put myself in situations where I’m at risk. I don’t swim in the sea, I don’t jump off boats or into lakes, I am very careful about where I swim. I know my limits basically.

DH is a great swimmer and he is definitely much more gung ho around water, he will happily launch himself off stuff, and is much less risk averse than me.

I wonder how much it balances out between being good at swimming but then willingly putting yourself in situations where you are more at risk, or being not good at swimming and just choosing not to put yourself in situations like that. In 40 years I’ve never been close to a situation where I have needed to swim to save my life as I just don’t do activities like that.

My DD does swimming lessons but I can’t say she enjoys them. She’s like me, very risk averse and cautious in the first place. She’s never going to be launching herself off the side of a boat or getting close enough to the side of things to fall in!

Water safety is more important in all these scenarios than ability to swim.

You should not be going into the sea at any depth or large body of open water without a buoyancy aid or as part of an organised event with safety crews. Not if you fully understand the water and water safety.

You should we aware of the dangers of falling in - it more important to talk about how not to fall in than know how to save yourself once you fall in.

As you do rightly point out, cold water shock is a real risk in the UK. And that's precisely why you try not to fall in as a priority because even if you can swim, you still are at risk of cold water shock.

I personally still think swimming is important though and you should continue until the end of primary. Even short distances are worthwhile learning - it reduces your risk of panicking in situations which are less about open water.

You hit the nail on the head in terms of one of the problems.

This absolutely is a problem.

Certainly you get too many dickheads who say they can swim get into trouble around Wales on paddle boards without a buoyancy aid because they are too cool for one and think they know better than to follow basic water safety advice.

Im a swimming teacher, do you practice outside of swimming lessons? Or do holiday intensives? 30 minutes a week isn't alot of time. Unless you do 121 lessons. It will take alot longer. 25metres isnt a compete swimmer

If you want to stop swimming lessons, have another plan in place. Their muscles need to become fluent in the movement required.

Swimming is supposed to be fun, how often do you go as a family to just be in the pool and have fun splashing about. If the lessons have become a chore, change the focus. Let him invite friends, go for chips or an ice cream afterwards. If he’s swimming with friends, throwing a ball about maybe , having silly races, it’s not necessarily about technique, although that definitely helps, it’s about confidence.

MN is weirdly obsessed with swimming lessons IMO - it’s not something I’ve ever seen reflected in real life! Also being able to swim confidently in a warm pool is generally pretty meaningless if you fall into a cold river in your clothes!

Most forms for outdoor water activities ask for 50m.

It's very frustrating being a teenager who can't swim 50m. Been there. Done that. Do not recommend.

My 14yo has just finished at the end of stage 8. He's reached his limit which is fair enough. His brother has moved on to Rookie Lifeguard which is more fun than the technique lessons. I'm happy at this point that the technique is well embedded and should be there for life as long as they're fit.

Stage 5 made a difference in stamina. In their lessons that was a difference between a tick box can swim 25m (4) and can swim 25m multiple times during the session (5). Stages 6+ boosted stamina at swimming well. When mine went to 45 mins at the start of stage 7, it surprised me how much DS2 struggled with the stamina for that despite all the other sports he does.

I'll admit to bribing incentivising with a cash reward at the end of each stage. (It started with DS1 stalling deliberately to avoid moving up to the bigger, colder pool at 2-3)

I learned at adult lessons and can now swim a mile in open water. Statistically, I'm more at risk of drowning when going for a run than a planned swim. All it takes is encountering an idiot barrelling along a tow path on an electric scooter. I may well be more than 25m from an accessible exit point.

DH is a non-swimmer. Never had any lessons, school or otherwise. He can bob about and thrash himself a length of the pool, but it is limiting. He's never taken the DCs into a pool solo, and cramped the fun he has with them.

That’s Australia. Loads of open water. Willing to bet that the vast majority of those deaths-like drowning deaths everywhere-are drunk adults.

The 50m requirement is more about confidence in water than ability to swim. The two are different. They don't want you to have an accident and panic - if you are someone who can't swim far this is more likely. It's a bit of an arbitrary distance that doesn't really mean anything in practice.

That's not true, my oldest is stage 6 and learning various life-saving techniques. They are learning what to do if they fall in the water, they have had lessons wearing clothes to prepare them for how much more difficult it would be to swim if you fall in, they learn sculling (I think that's what it's called!), diving to the bottom to pick stuff up etc. They learn both theory and also get to try it out. All this could be helpful in an emergency.

Our plan is for him to keep having weekly lessons until he is strong, fit and old enough to learn actual lifesaving. As in, that's the route we're going down rather than the competitive swimming route.

Ds1 was around about your DS age when he had enough of swimming lessons.
I wanted to get him to a stage where he could confidently enjoy swimming at holiday parks and go on water slides.

It was becoming a battle and no one was enjoying the session.

Funny thing once he got into his mid teens he went back swimming on his own accord and took it up. He is now an adult and an avid swimmer. You’ve go to go away to come back I guess!

I taught my children to swim and never bothered with swimming lessons. Both are confident strong swimmers. I've no idea what level they would have attained if it was paid for lessons, but they can certainly get themselves from one end of a swimming pool to the other, and have swam confidently in the sea. As part of teaching them, I also taught life saving skills (I appreciate not every parent is equiped to do this).

Most of them are people from other places who stopped their swimming lessons too early.

Drowning rates at the age of 10 increase ten-fold by the age of 20, likely due to increases in risk taking and a lack of swimming, water safety and lifesaving skills in youth and young adult populations.

Source: Royal Life Saving Australia National Drowning Report 2024.

Mine swam with school for one term a year, so just used to do the swim lessons for the other two terms when they were finding it monotonous
There were stages when it was a different teacher every week, and nothing was getting signed off on the water passport because no one knew what the previous teacher had covered. My son got to the end of stage 7 with breaks a long the way, and then chose to swim competitively. My daughter is in stage 7 now and doesn't really enjoy it, so she'll stop on completion I think.
She got very fed up in stage 6 so we has a six month break, and went on a waiting list for the teacher that always turns up, is strong, consistent and focused on getting their things ticked off on the passport. She can cope with moving to a goal but not never getting there because of staffing of swim teachers etc.
I don't think stage 4 is anywhere near enough, but he doesn't have to do it all over night