baby swimming - is it worth it?

[mololoko]

twelve quid a pop - seems like a lot of money when we can just splash around in the bath together (dd 5mo).

do they do anything to make it worth the money? does your baby smell of chlorine for days?

don't get me wrong, i love swimming and want dd to enjoy it too, but am wondering if the baby swimming classes are really worth the money...

I took my Ds when he was about 6m to one of the Waterbabies classes. I'm really glad I did.
The classes were very similar each week (lots of repetitive stuff) and you learn to take the babies underwater. My son loved it and it was great for his water confidence, but I felt one term was enough as there was little difference in content and it is very expensive.

does your local council run pool run baby classes? I found that private classes were £10+, whereas the council ones were £4 per session.

I took one look and decided that they weren't doing anything that I couldn't do on my own with dd, so I did just that. There's no way I would say they are worth £12 a session .

Take DD swimming yourself - lots of splashing around, 'jumping' in, swishing through the water etc. Your local pool may have a parent and baby/toddler session for normal prices which has some activities.

FWIW, I have never taken DS to one of those classes, and at 2.7 years he is really water confident and making a good effort at swimming. We like swimming together and go most weeks

We go to our local council run ones and they're great. dd1 went and dd2 is just at the end of her baby sessions now (starts water playgroup with an instructor in two mths ) They've been great for both girls water confidence, and they're a great place for your kids and you to socialise too, plus it actually makes you go to the pool every week too (or if your like me, you can start making excuses to yourself) Here when they finish baby swim, they go onto playgroup, then 'proper' lessons at 5, they then have the option to join the swim clubs too if they want to

We do water babies at £100 for a term on 9 lessons

My friend has just started council ones for £50 for 12 lessons.

I think I may swap, WB is good but, tbh, it's just fun to have something to do with her in the water. I'm not that fussed about her swimming under water and all that.

ALso, a woman at WB said she took her older daughter til she was 2.5 then stopped due to her younger DC and now her daughter has lost all her water confidence.

I think regular trips to the pool is the most important thing.

Not knocking WB though as we have enjoyed it so far.

it's definitely worth taking babies and young children swimming - but definitely not worth paying ££££ for lessons

the most important thing as far as developing water confidence is going swimming regularly - dd(6) didn't do proper lessons until she was 4.5 but we took her every week when her big brothers were having lessons - she's now joined a swimming club and is positively fish-like

oh, and get them used to wearing goggles - makes a huge difference to how they feel about putting their face in the water

I have appreciated having lessons so far (DS is 8 months now and has been going for 5 months) as we've learned the proper way to go under etc., but I have been thinking recently that we seem to get less and less out of the 'lesson' and spend more time messing about (which is cool, but an expensive way to mess about!)