How did your child learn to swim?

[ilikeyoursleeves]

We are getting back into taking our ds's to the swimming pool after being out the way of it for ages, ds1 is 3.8 years & ds2 is nearly 2. We have never had the boys at 'official' swimming lessons but just really played about with them in the pool etc to get them used to the water. I'm just wondering how to progress them to actually learning how to swim? Anyone taught their own kids to swim or do all kids go to swimming lessons these days?

What age do people think for the one to one classes? As I posted above, we do aquatots as I thought she was still a little young for proper lessons (3.1)

p.s. both of mine go to group lessons once a week. When we take them to the pool ourselves ds uses a woggle/noodle

our council run classes start from age 3 (where they take the kids in the water without an parent). I didnt bother till ds was nearly 4 though

Ours also start at 3, I just don't think she's sufficiently capable of taking instruction in a formal lesson setting yet.

I think they probably need lessons to learn the strokes. They can learn to "swim" (i.e. float) just by lots of exposure to swimming pools. My dcs swim every day (we don't live in uk!) so dd2 was able to get across the pool by age 3, just because she was always in the water. Now she's having lessons to learn the strokes, as if you leave it to her, she swims like a wind-up bath toy.

I started my DS at 1 and DD at 6 months at baby classes (not aquatots) at our local swimming pool. DS is 15 and stopped his lessons when he was 13 and had passed his bronze medallion. DD 13 is still going to life saving lesson.
DS surprised me the other day as he said he missed his swimming lessons.

I am a very strong swimmer and started doing an advanced class again 9 years ago but I would not teach my dcs to swim. I see so many kids who have been taught by their parents and don't know how to breath properly or swim with their heads up.

We take ours once a fortnight. They can both swim reasonably well. Aged 2 and 5.
No paid for lessons, but dh always tries to do a bit of teaching certain strokes/ floating and diving for the older one.

Think they learnt the most on holidays with a pool and hours and hours of swimming and playing. If only I could do that once a fortnight!..

All six DC had swimming lessons from 3 or 4. We found the best way was to enroll them on crash courses in the summer holidays so that they could swim every day for as many weeks as we could afford. Then we booked them in for weekly swimming lessons. We did lessons every Saturday morning for years and years. It paid off I suppose they are all strong swimmers. All but one DC have gone on to do life saving etc. My teenage sons go for a 30min lane swim before school 3 days per week.

we got our kids used to being in water and then let the professionals take over.

I think if you want to do professional lessons, the choice between 1-1 and group really depends on the child. DD didn't progress at all in group lessons, so I took her out & taught her to swim myself at a basic level. She then went back into lessons, again didn't progress - so I tried a 1-1 and it made a huge difference.

Buying prescription goggles also helped a lot, mind you, since she could actually see the teacher

Overall I think if you just want them to be safe in the water, you can probably teach them perfectly well if you're a confident swimmer. If you want them to learn all the strokes, make sure they have good technique in all of them, etc. then lessons are probably the way to go. I learnt from my dad - no lessons - which is fine, & I'm a pretty good swimmer, but I can't do butterfly at all, and I'm very much stronger at breaststroke/backstroke than crawl, as dad didn't insist that I practiced them equally, so I stuck with the ones I took to first.