Swimming lessons for 5 year old - to keep going?

[foreverchangingnappies]

Just after advice really. My nearly 6 year old has been doing weekly swimming lessons for 2 years now, but still can’t swim and not sure if I should give up for now!

He started at just under 4 in preschool lessons, and then started beginner lessons last September when he started school. He loves his lessons and is in nice small classes, but just does not seem to be progressing.

I should add that it took him 18 months of those lessons to confidently put his face in the water, which I know has delayed things quite significantly! Now he will put it in fine. He seems to have all the skills when using a float, but whenever they try to get him to try without anything he just hops along the floor - basically he’s scared to lift his feet off and try without any floats if that makes sense?

Any tips to help? I don’t want to give up lessons really as I think that will put him back in confidence when he starts again, but it is a lot of money for not much progress happening! Is it common for it to take so long for someone who’s still quite nervous/anxious in the water?

Well you’re being robbed by the swim school. Speak to the instructor and ask what techniques they are going to do to get him to take his feet off the floor without a float.

then there’s the obvious - star chart etc.

perhaps a break would do him good? Or not? You know him best

is 1 on 1 sessions an option?

If you stop he might lose confidence. I’d try different lessons. Does he go to a swimming pool at any other time?
A holiday with access to a pool might just help him to get the skill. Is his coordination generally good? No difficulties with gross motor skills?

You could try lessons at a pool where he cant reach the bottom. My DC learnt in a pool like this and it woukd get rid of the issue if him putting his feet down.

@24Dogcuddlerthats my worry and why I don’t want him to stop. We are going away in the summer so will hopefully help him then!

His coordination is ok for example he can ride a bike without stabilisers fine, but he’s not the most sporty which probably doesn’t help.

I had this with my eldest - not helped by covid restrictions and no instructors allowed in the pool. She was a similar age and languishing on stage bloody 1 and honestly it was bloody soul destroying!

so in the end I lost my shit after spending another £35 a month watching her hold on to the side. No more gentle parenting

so I started to take her myself after the lesson - for up to an hour every week . And I went at it like an Olympic coach watching u tube videos and yes she did cry. But I was determined and I bribed cajoled and downright insisted she did it and stopped all the other clubs she enjoyed going to until she started to show some effort in swimming. But we cracked in and then she passed stage stage 2 and then 3 within 6 months of each other and progressed really quickly

This. They should have worked now to instil the confidence in your child to be able to swim

We had this situation, we stopped swimming at the start of primary school as DS hated it, thought we would give DS a break. Now at age 7, we are starting a new swim school and he wants to do it. The first lesson went really well! I also said it was a non-negotiable skill, but forcing him to carry on would not have worked. When they see their friends can swim, they will pick up interest x

i don’t think it’s the teacher - she is very good with him and patient as he is always anxious as soon as it comes to trying without floats. He has come a long way since starting, he just seems a bit stuck at the moment! He lacks confidence and won’t even jump in, even though he can stand up in the pool.

I think it doesn’t help he is tall and very skinny and seems to struggle to float without any floats. He lacks strength as well so perhaps I need to keep being patient.

His younger sibling is doing really well in a different class with the same teacher, so I really don’t think it’s down to the teacher,
its his confidence

Could you afford a couple of private lessons so he has one to one attention to get him going then go back to classes? If he’s enjoying it that’s half the battle with a nervous swimmer so it would be a shame to stop.

Do you take him swimming outside his lessons ?

In solidarity.
My DD has had lessons for four years. She is on stage 2!
She has been at three different swim schools and now has 1-1 lessons, which I actually feel have made her worse. I only went 1-1 as it's always advised here as the answer.
I take her swimming between lessons. For one year I paid for two lessons a week.

I could cry, but I won't, so I'll laugh instead at all the money I've spent.

I’m going to look into a few 1:1s and see if that helps him a bit. We go swimming occasionally but I have another younger child so it’s hard as I can’t take them both in on my own.

@Wonderonessorry to hear you are having the same! Hopefully they will get there eventually!

@foreverchangingnappiesand you can’t leave the younger child with the dad for an hour to take him?

also you need to look for a pool where they can’t touch the bottom. I also put my child in for week long crash courses in the half terms in pools I knew were deeper than her usual pool

A break can be very helpful.
1-1 lessons can be very helpful.
More time just playing in the shallow end can be helpful.

Definitely try a different teacher, they are not approaching this in the right way for him however nice they are.

A term or two of one-to-one lessons. So expensive where I am but finally cracked it. The teacher spent first lesson or two teaching him how to actually breathe whilst swimming. This was a big part of the problem !

1:1 might really help. We just finishing a block of 1:1 sessions for my 6 year old son. He would cry if he got splashed in the face, freaked out and clung to us alot. 6 weeks now I can't get him out from underwater. He is loving swimming and confidence has grown and grown. It is expensive but equally probably on balance takes longer via group lessons so maybe not alot of difference.

When I was just under 5yo we went on holiday to Spain staying in a villa where the pool had a dolphin tiled on the bottom - both my sister and me totally cracked swimming that holiday because we wanted to play and wear goggles and dive under looking at the dolphin! It wasn't "swimming" as a technique per se, just playing about for hours in the pool and getting comfortable being in and under the water.

Well I wouldn’t carry on with these lessons personally as clearly dc getting nothing out of it.

My dd was slow in the first stage due to a fear of water but we spent a lot of time just playing in the shallow end of the pool - could you and dp take both kids? If they associate pool with fun not failure they will do better

I would keep going. My eldest son was in stage 1 for two years and just complete stage 2 and 3 in a year. It took him so long to get the basics but is now learning much faster. He is also a skinny child.

what helped my son was at the end of the lesson they practiced gliding. You don’t float easily by not moving. Same as a bike - you stop and have no balance. At the end each time she would have them a meter away from the pool edge and they would a ‘superman jump’ to the side getting further out each time. Suddenly one time he started doing doggy paddle and his feet were off the ground.

also his teacher moved him up before he was 100% ready. The longer he was staying down in stage 1 once he most of the skills she felt was detrimental. He could do all the drills much faster than the rest of the class. But couldn’t do a star float for example. It worked well for him to do this.

My son took AGES to learn to swim. In the end the thing that made the difference was getting him in daily 1-2-1 lessons in a weeks block at the time (during school holidays). Think we did it 3 or 4 times and he made huge strides. Improving more in a week than a year of weekly lessons. He just needed the consistency of doing it daily and also the full attention of the instructor. I think expense wise it was money well spent, we’d have spent that anyway if we’d plodded on with the weekly lessons. Wish I’d done it sooner.

My second dc I’m doing a mix of both the weekly and then a week of daily lessons in the holidays and it’s working well again.

I would switch to lessons where the water is deeper. My kids never progressed when they could touch the bottom. Some shallow ends are shallower than others.