When did your child learn to swim?

[Washandblowdryplease]

Just curious after a conversation. My child is 3.5 and has been having lessons since 2. She absolutely loves it and is making progress. Great. It could be some time before she is properly swimming but that's fine.

My friend's DD is older and the mum was arguing that I was wasting time/ money starting so young.

I won't change my opinion. Not least because I feel my DD was overconfident around water and the lessons have improved her water safety no end.

I was just curious what other people have done and how it worked. So what age did your child learn to swim? And how long were they learning for?

My 6 year old dd started lessons a few months ago and can now swim a width by herself.

Mine started at 5 and 4 and were managing a width front and back within a few months. (Wasn't pretty though!)

now at 7 and 9 can swim well in 3 strokes and learning 4th. Younger one has caught up sibling, she is very good at listening and applying correction.

People's definition of swimming differs.

Here proper lessons don’t start until 4 as they believe children don’t listen well enough for a 45 minute lesson. The do start straight in the deep end - the pool they learn in doesn’t have a shallow end so they have to get swimming pretty fast. I will say her progress has been good. But her grandparents have a swimming pool and I took her swimming with me regularly from when she was around 18 months (Covid before that).

She is 6 and now learning strokes - loves swimming and can sort herself out to the side if she is chucked in a swimming pool. I’m pretty happy with that. It’s bit a race and my main aim is that she can swim confidently a length so she can go sailing when she is 8 and the sailing lessons start.

Mine started swimming lessons at 5yrs old and were good swimmers by 7. In an ideal world I would have started them much earlier, but for various reasons it wasn’t possible.