Advice for helping my nine-year-old gain confidence swimming unaided

[Saralocky28]

Really need some advice/support on 9 year old not being able to swim.

My son is 9 and as much as he loves water, splash parks, dunking his head under, body boarding in the sea (shallow) he still cannot safely swim unaided.

Since he was 4 we've had swimming lessons on and off, some of it had to stop due to costs, another time he broke his leg and totally lost his confidence and the most recent time it closed down.

He really suffers from anxiety/potential undiagnosed autism, so joining another new class is very overwhelming for him. He gets really upset & its really stressful for him & me.

We go away quite a lot abroad and UK and always go swimming and he is absolutely fine in water where he can stand but anything deeper he panicks, won't even try to swim or let me help him. In his lessons he could easily swim on his front and back with a woggle in deep water but refuses with me.

I'm just getting worried that its never going to happen and he starts year 5 soon and they do swimming lessons and I'm concerned other kids will be mean to him.

I can't really afford more private swimming lessons but we're on a waiting list for the council ones as they are a lot cheaper.

Other than keep taking him myself, does anyone have any useful tips or words of advice to help him please?

Ask around about a local swimming club that isn't too competitive. We have two in our area, one is and one isn't.

We signed up to the one that wasn't and my similarly aged autistic kid started out in the beginners group (very shallow pool, about 1m deep) and was swimming within 6 weeks after years and years of unsuccessful lessons. This was also after a year of school swimming where they were the only kid in the class that still couldn't swim at the end of the summer term!

My kid was absolutely petrified of swimming until the point that the club got them swimmimg. We even tried a parent and child class and they spent 3/4 of each lesson clinging on to us and screaming at the age of about 5.

I think my kids found the club to be more fun. The coaches were volunteers that had been working with kids for years so really knew their stuff.

And the plus side is that they could do double the swimming sessions (if they wanted to) for half the cost of the lessons at the local pools.

This led on to my kids eventually joining their life saving club.

To be honest if it's not a private school the swimming lessons are rubbish you only have around 5 lessons a year in year 5 and 6 so there will probably only be kids there that have never had lessons before. Do you know what pool they are using mine used an outside pool in another school so was not that deep. It's quite normal to not like swimming out of your depth so don't worry. My DS is in his 20s and has just started swimming lessons again and is really enjoying it.