Family swimming times - AIBU?

[FamilySwimming]

Just looking for a sense check on this one.

The two local leisure centres only have certain very limited times for family swimming, meaning in the kids' pool. So if I want to take my 2 year old swimming, the only times we can book are between 12 and 2pm.

My 2 year old eats lunch at 12 and then has a nap every day. Surely this is pretty standard for any child who has one nap per day?

AIBU or is this an absolutely insane time to schedule family swimming? I feel like I just won't be able to take her swimming until she's stopped napping completely.

I spoke to them on the phone and they basically said that my toddler's meal and nap schedule isn't their problem, but I was under the impression that this is most toddlers' meal and nap schedule, hence the AIBU.

I know I definitely had school swimming lessons in water we could stand up in, until we could swim 25 metres, at which point we went with a different teacher into the deep pool.

How did your 4 year old stay afloat before she had... you know... learnt to stay afloat? Unless it was the type of lesson where the parent is in the pool holding them up..? But you must know that not all swimming lessons take that format, especially school lessons, and lessons for children past pre-school age, where the format is more commonly a large group of children with one instructor, either in or out of the pool. You can't just dump a group of kids who can't swim in a pool they can't stand up in, come on, think about it!😂

What is it about the 1m depth that makes you think it's 'designed for toddlers'? Who, last time I looked, aren't tall to enough stand in 1m water and can't swim unaided?

They use noodles to stay afloat, but yeah, straight into the deep water from the first lesson. No parents in the water. Just the teacher and 3 or 4 kids. It works really well. I'm glad he's not having lessons at the leisure centre now!

They can stand up in the shallow end. It's 1m deep at the deep end.

Surely if it was 'designed for toddlers', as you said it is, there wouldn't be a 1m deep end.

Sounds like it's designed to accommodate a variety of children doing a variety of things. Probably including baby, toddler and beginner child lessons. Nice of them to free it up for family play for 2 hours during holidays when they could be making a small fortune charging for lessons. It's a shame those 2 hours don't suit your child's particular needs, and good that you have alternatives i.e. another pool in the complex or another pool altogether.

Good point. There's a 1 metre-deep pool at our local leisure centre too. It's always full of families with children of all ages, (to be fair, the opening hours are much broader). Its official name is the "Learner Pool". It had never even occurred to me it was just for toddlers. Because it's not.

Gosh, yes, how good of them to let families swim at all, ever. Must remember to be more grateful.

🙄

I can see I’m in the minority but I agree with you OP! Mine have always napped 12-2 when little. Of course you can move it a bit but they just wouldn’t last. Our pool does an under 4s session at 1pm - 2pm and I rarely go for the same reason. We also have a miniature railway which starts running at 12 at the weekend and I often think they’d get more business if they started at 10 as I do think you notice the empty out as lunch gets closer.

Imagine running a leisure centre that had to ensure its hours and activities fit the schedule of all its members let alone every potential once-or-twice-per-holidays drop in customer like you.

It's a public swimming pool. It should be accessible to everyone.

Mine’s older now, but 12 was lunch followed immediately by a nap. While I was happy to be flexible, I can assure you that he wasn’t. If he wasn’t fed by quarter past twelve, there was a huge tantrum. Sleep inevitably followed lunch, sometimes in the chair. Any deviation from this guaranteed a hellish night with regular waking. Every child that I know had similar nap times with the exception of one SAHM who is a night owl and her kids nap in the evening and go down between 11pm and 1am for 12hrs. We’re usually up at 6am (sick child tonight), so it makes sense to me that halfway through their day, toddlers need naps. Mine didn’t outgrow naps until he was 2.5. He probably needed them for longer, but wanted to stay awake with the other kids.

Swimming lessons for schools were part of the national curriculum and children were supposed to be able to swim by the time they finished key stage 1. Most schools took their year 2 children. Non swimmers in the learner pool and those who had already learnt in the main pool. This is why many leisure centres were /are out of action for other users during the day. It's not just toddlers affected but others who would like to swim at times other than lunch time.
I'm out of date but I think the requirement for children to be taught to swim has ended but many schools still take them..
Even if the learner pool is not being used by the school, in today's heightened health and safety society you cannot have schools sharing changing rooms with the public or have random adults and small children using the facilities at the same time. Therefore the learner pool will be closed.

But it is accessible!

Reserving the kids' pool for private lessons is an awful thing to do.

My disabled child was unable to have group swimming lessons - it wouldn’t have been fair either on him or on any other child in the group. He had to learn in the shallow pool for his own safety and because it was much warmer than the main pool and due to his disabilities he couldn’t easily regulate his core temperature. We used his DLA to pay for the private lessons.

You started this thread saying you are “just looking for a sense check on this one”

3 out of 4 people say you are being unreasonable and yet you have been rude and graceless to those who have, dismissing them as SAHM, pensioners or too stupid to understand how important your needs are.

As you mentioned earlier you’re worried about running out of crayons, allow me to explain it very carefully.

The leisure centre doesn’t have to be ‘inclusive’ of your very specific day off to meet the wider needs of the community. The world still turns when you’re at work.

This. I make my GP appointments via the app and go at the time they give me and I never go swimming so I, personally, am not getting in your way inconveniencing your PFB but in between all my other commitments I'll go where I fucking want when I fucking choose.

I'm not asking them to accommodate my day off. I'm asking whether it is reasonable that they do not accommodate children swimming in the children's pool at any other time than the oddly specific time slot of 12-2pm, on any day of the week.

I don't think that's reasonable at all and am very surprised that Mumsnet apparently thinks this is normal. The poster who claimed that is "accessible to everyone" reminds me of the kind of poster who insists that her partner is a great dad because he watches their kids while she is cooking dinner every night.

I don't understand how that is remotely similar.

It is reasonable because, as we have already established, we think it's really important that children learn to swim. That's why schools organise swimming lessons so that every child has a basic grounding, and why swimming pools rent out their pools for school swimming lessons during term time.

For reasons of safeguarding, they do not let randos in the baby pool during this time.

It is also reasonable because school lessons are the main way leisure centres have staying afloat (all puns intended) in these troubled times so it makes far more sense for them to use the pool for these lessons, rather than keep it free for the random £4.50 you might give them a couple of times a year.

But they're not complete savages so they set aside 2 hours a day when schools or after school swimming lessons will not want the pool, for babies and toddlers.

They probably also try to keep the older folk happy by squeezing in the odd aqua fit too - although when you think this would be reasonable remains to be seen.

Given how many toddlers you think would be desperate to get in the pool if only they were capable of shifting their nap by half an hour, it's probably also a good way of keeping the numbers down. Dear god, there must be some perks to having a toddler who drops their nap.

I used to think it was annoying that lots of baby groups started at 10am, because that is when my baby napped. However, the groups ran on so it obviously wasn't an issue for everybody else and their babies. I never would have dreamed of calling the organisers and suggesting they change the time. For my child, a 10-11am nap then lunch and swim would have worked. But we couldn't have made library sing and sign or whatever for 10am and I just accepted it.

Inclusive to me is a word for accomodating disability, gender, race, sexuality etc... all those big things. Not individual nap times 🤦‍♀️

Inclusive, but not of everybody.

Got it.

Everybody Active, but children who can't get to the pool at lunchtime aren't included in "everybody".

Non inclusive would be not giving toddlers access to the pool at all. They have a time slot, it's just inconvenient for you.

There isn't enough hours in the day to please everyone. Thats the point.

There just isn't enough public pools for the population.

It's the same bloody time slot every day!

If the toddler time slot was midnight to 2am you'd have a point

I could argue my local wasn't inclusive because the lane swimming I want to attend is at 7am-8am, when I'm sleeping from my night job, and 7pm-8pm, when I'm at my job.

Just because the hours don't suit YOU doesn't mean it's not inclusive

Until a couple of years ago the pool was run by a different franchise and they managed just fine.

The other pool I have found ten miles away is still run by the other franchise and, would you believe it, they have slots at 9:30, 10:30, 11:30, 3:00 and 4:00 today.