Swimming lessons - does every child do it?

[middleagedandinarage]

How important does everyone think child swimming lessons are? Does everyone put their children? DD's 6 and 4, both currently go to council run lessons, half an hour once a week. They both hate it, have done since day one, don't hold a carry on when actually in the pool and do as they're asked but it's a fight getting them to go every week and the fight is draining! I've always said it's none negotiable, swimming lessons are a must but are they? Is it worth the fight?

We just do a course of 6 weeks from time to time rather than continuous. Can they swim adequately? If so I’d drop it for a bit - nothing like being forced to do sport to turn you off it!

absolutely non negotiable. Would they maybe prefer if you took them yourself on a Saturday morning or something? Sorry they don't like it but it has to be done :(

We gave up after 3 "dry" lessons where he point blank refused. These were council sessions. He was 4. He hated water of any kind, even just splashing at the local leisure centre.

Now he is 8 and has been having small group private lessons for a year and can swim! Sometimes it's the age?

We live by the coast and I grew up in the water all day every day.
I really agree with others....we live on an island surrounded by water and have rivers and waterways all around us.
Kids are silly, they get pushed to do things through peer pressure. It's a life skill every child should have. Why risk it?
I took my daughter to baby lessons as soon as she had her first injections and was safe to go. She very quickly became a very confident swimmer.
I was very thankful for this when she ran off and jumped into the pool on holiday when she was 2.....fully clothed. All the other parents jumped up horrified but she just popped up and swam across the pool.

As others have said, perhaps leave it a while with the lessons or just go to the pool with them to splash around and make it fun, then go back to it at a later stage. Keep them around water tho and build up their confidence.

Mine have never had swimming lessons - we go to the pool for hours at a time and they have learned from being in the water. I agree that being able to swim is an advantage, but lessons aren't necessarily the best way to learn!

We live on the coast, pretty much every child DS knows swims. He has one friend with some significant additional needs who just can't be in the water.

It was non negotiable in my house, they went if they liked it or not. Once they got to level where i knew if they fell in a river they could swim and get out i gave them the choice to carry on or stop and they all stopped.

When i was about 9 i nearly drowned (couldnt swim and parents not bothered) so i made sure my kids could swim.

no. i live in an area that has no swimming classes. all my kids can swim because i taught them. it’s absolutely not necessary

I had the view that swimming lessons were a must, my parents took me for years.

Then I took my adhd son for a year and he barely learned a thing. They get one go up and down then someone elses turn and in half an hour they didnt really do much.
I have a younger son so just taught him myself and he learned so much quicker.they can both swim relatively well and I would want to send them to an intensive lifesaving course when they are a little older and possibly some additional lessons.

But no, I dont think the weekly group lessons are a must. But learning to swim is, but you dont need to trapse to the swimming pool once a week for group lessons against their will to teach them to swim. There are other ways.

If they hate it that much stop, maybe go to the pool as a fun activity and then start lessons again when they are older. Otherwise you’re going to make being in the water into a big thing and they might develop real aversion to it

Non negotiable in this house but DD loves it. Perhaps try a different lesson.
DD (5) goes to one that is small groups, very relaxed and lots of fun and games. They do learn swimming but in a very unstructured way.

Not being able to swim at 11 is still a huge indicator of deprivation.

Swimming is like crossing the road. If you don't teach your children to do it they are more likely to die unexpectedly. However the years and years of fights wore me down and I realised that although I was dragging a child to "get some physical activity" one night of the week it was actually shockingly bad value. We stopped classes and went to occasional top up crash courses.

I wonder if it's the setting - mine are the same age as yours and the older one did swimming lessons for almost a year at our local council leisure centre, he absolutely hated it, made no progress and the lessons were totally not engaging for him. We've started both kids now at a private swim school and they absolutely love it and have progressed so much in the few months they've been going. Only downside is it is a little more expensive. I agree with others, learning to swim is a non-negotiable and could potentially be life saving for them one day.

Swimming is non-negotiable for us, but most swimming lessons are an appallingly inefficient way to learn.

Having seen four children through swimming lessons in various forms, I have concluded that the following is the best method if what you want is your kid to be safe in water (rather than pursuing swimming as a sport):

• At around age 5-7, start going swimming as a family until the child is comfortable in water, getting face wet etc. If you go on holiday somewhere with a pool and the kid is in every day, you can reach this point really quickly.
• Then get an extremely competent 1:1 swimming teacher. This is expensive, but they learn so much faster than standard swimming lessons that it evens out overall.
• Tell the teacher that you don't want to follow the Swim England curriculum. You want the kid to be able to: float, tread water, rescue themselves in clothes and swim 100m in one or two strokes (front crawl and backstroke probably).
• Job done.

The Swim England curriculum is designed partly to teach swimming as a sport, so you waste lesson after lesson getting the child to do dolphin or underwater somersaults, which is a huge waste of time if what you are aiming for is water safety.

I did lessons in school but never learnt properly.
My mum can't swim either. I can float however. My eldest dc did lessons for a while and can float but can't swim well. It seems to take years and years to learn properly. Youngest has yet to start as still using armbands but dh will probably just teach him
Swimming lessons seem to be a bit of a scam imo. So much money wasted over the last few years and dd still can't swim.

Can they swim 100m and tread water unaided for 3 minutes? If not, then they need to learn. Switch provider if you have to but unless they are safe around water then this is a vital life skill.
They would soon be complaining if they started to drown.

Honestly have a look to see if your pool does crash courses - my 6 year old has had 2 weeks of crash courses (30 minutes, 5 mornings a week) and can swim already!

Our local pools only do 3 lessons per week in a crash course and they're almost always around the 1pm time so too tieing really time-wise but hoping to do 1 to 1s sometime in the future.

Have you given them a nose clip? I always hated swimming as a child and a friend suggested I try with a nose clip and it’s a completely different experience, it turns out I just hated the feeling of water going up my nose.

We went swimming every week with the children but it was mainly water confidence and then when they were 4 they did a week long intensive 30 minutes a day at a private school pool in the holidays. They repeated this the next holiday so 6 weeks later and after that when we went swimming weekly they had to swim widths and then they could mess about diving for sticks or swimming between our legs.

It is part of the school curriculum, from .gov website "All schools must provide swimming instruction either in key stage 1 or key stage 2.

• In particular, pupils should be taught to:
• swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres

Year 3 is when it started in my children's primary which meant every week they went to a local pool and had lessons. It is a vital life skill but you need to practise what they are taught in the lesson which means making time for them to swim outside of their lessons. Our holidays included daily swimming so this also helped.

DD learnt to swim, it was a must as we also lived near the sea. DD is now in her 20s, she has a friend who cannot swim and is learning as an adult. Her friend is scared to go swimming on holiday etc.

Very important i wasn't put in swimming as a kid or even took swimming so it was really embarrassing when I went to secondary school and did swimming at school and I was the only one in the class who couldn't swim i finally learnt to swim when I was 12 through school but I'm a very weak swimmer I doubt I'd be able to save myself and definitely wouldn't be able to save someone else.

Absolute must for me, both got to stage 7, eldest completed but DS2 asked to leave part way through as he’d had enough but he was a very competent swimmer (hence getting bored I think).

I don’t know any kids who do official lessons but do go swimming with parents now and again.

I could not agree with you more.