Unconditional parenting types - would you insist your reluctant child learn to swim?

[Scrumplet]

If so, why? And by what age would you insist?

If not, would you simply give them the space to feel ready in their own time, no matter how long it took? Or would you try to gently encourage them - somehow! - without coercion, rewards, etc? How?

A thread I started in January convinced me that it is important that DS (nearly five - and very anti lessons/anything resembling being taught) learns. I am wondering how to reconcile the need for him to learn with both his reluctance to and my attempts at unconditional parenting.

Thanks for any ideas.

From what I know of swimming, the majority of children don't really 'get' it till they're approaching 7. Some do much younger, but a lot, despite years of lessons, just muck around until their bodies are co-ordinated and then it comes easily.
So ease up I'd say. He'll get there!

What access do you have to a pool?
Are you in the UK?
Do you know if it is the water or the lessons that are putting him off? Public swimming pools are horribly noisy, faffy and cold. Maybe it's that.

If you can work out what it is you could have strategies. He is still young. No I would not force it nor would I offer bribes.

But I would make swimming a regular part of your lives for a while to desensitise him. If you have other children I would go as a family so that dh can take the others and you can watch with ds. I would take turns so that sometimes you go in, sometimes dh.

I would get a paddling pool and get both yours and his swimming costumes on and muck about. I would give him goggles in the bath and see if he can blow bubbles underwater. If he wears the goggles then you could put things under the water to show how fun it is to see them.

I think there are lots of things you can do that don't involve lessons but might lead to an enjoyment of swimming and eventual acceptance of lessons. Even going into a lesson with him.

Indoor pools and lessons can be quite off-putting. Instructors have to shout to be heard, often, and it echoes around.

If all else fails, how about "I bet you can't do this by the time I count to ten." Or monkey rides where he's always on your back.

But I wouldn't pressure because he will dig his heels in.

Just to say, I taught mine the early swimming before they went to lessons. It was "unconditional" in the sense that it was "well this is what we're all doing and you can do what you can, you can sit on the side, you can dangle your feet, you can stand on the steps, but we're all swimming, come and have a go". But we were lucky with access to private pools and I know that it 's much harder in a public pool.

Do you take him swimming for fun? Maybe that would be more enjoyable for him ATM.

We took ours for fun from birth, and they started lessons around 3. Both could swim confidently at 5yrs and are very strong swimmers now.

They learn at school (from Y3 or 4 usually), and many of DC's classmates hadn't been swimming before and are now enjoying learning.

So go with what you feel is right for your son and your family.

Tilly is right -- anything that works is the right way.

My enthusiasm is informed by a near drowning (not of any of my children) and I wanted all mine to Not Panic if they hit the water unexpectedly. That led to everything. From a very young age I think (only my opinion) that they need to not panic and be able to flounder their way to safety at least.

Don't need to have formal lessons to learn to swim. DS1 is 4.5 and can nearly swim unaided (swim vest only at the moment) and has never had a lesson yet. We swim together regularly and encourage him to he independent in the water so he 'wants' to be able to swim. We're now starting to help him float and kick 'like mummy and daddy'. He's very confident and happy in the water but cautious and respectful at the same time as we've let him explore.

Personally I'm too controlling to be wholey an unconditional parent but I have read up on it and do try to be a parent who knows when to back of and let them explore and 'learn' at their own pace.

Just an anecdote, but I had swimming lessons at school and never picked it up, was always scared of going out of my depth, insisted on wearing arm bands etc. We never went swimming with my mum because she didn't like it.

I didn't go swimming with friends in the big pool (stayed in the children's pool or shallow end) after I did once at about 12 and got picked on by an older girl at the pool for wearing armbands. When I was 14 or so I went swimming with my Dad and the swimming pool rules said I was too old to go down the flume accompanied, but armbands were not allowed on the flume. I wanted to go on the flume, so I decided I could manage to swim from the edge of the flume to the side of the pool and from then on felt I could swim short distances where I was out of my depth. At 18 or 19 I decided I was way too old for armbands and just decided to teach myself to swim. I started off in the shallow end to build my strength up, worked up to swimming a length but very close to the poolside so I could grab on if I felt scared (which I did the first few times - it was quite irrational!) I used to go swimming on Sunday mornings when the pool would be very quiet. Now I am happy to swim diagonally across the pool and don't panic if I am nowhere near any sides and out of my depth. I have taught myself to tread water as well which never came naturally to me just by experimenting, going very slowly out of my depth near the sides.

I think if I had had the opportunity to swim more around other children who could swim unaided I would have picked it up myself a lot earlier as wearing armbands older than about 7 or 8 is not cool!

We have had the enormous advantage of spending our summer holidays 5 minutes from a safe and friendly beach. I spent every summer of my childhood here, so do my children and their many cousins. Swimming lessons every day, both formal and informal; enormous social pressure to go in the water and work on the strokes. Even so, most children in the family haven't really "got" swimming until the age of 6-7; my ds was 8. But we have all gone on to become very confident swimmers.

My dad can't swim.

He has always regretted not being able to swim and has tried adult lessons and the throwing himself in and hoping for the best method of learning to swim.

I would always teach my kids to swim at least a little bit because I've seen how humiliating it was for my dad when we were little, the things he used to do to disguise the fact that he couldn't actually swim, and the things he put himself through to learn to swim when he retired.

Hope this helps

I wouldn't insist on lessons but I would make sure that you went to a pool with him at least once a week and just had fun-work up from there. Swimming is a life saving skill that is essential.

my 4 year olds were very resistant to swimming lessons.

I just took them on my own and taught them slowly - midway through being 5 they sort of got the idea of swimming.

I came to the conclusion that it is like reading and lots of other early skills - they do it when they can - and you can't force them to do it any faster - all you can do is give them the opportunity in as low key a way as possible.

throckenholt..I like interesting names and yours is very nice

I agree with piscesmoon.

DS is 6 next week and has just started lessons. He is doing fine.

I think he would have resisted a year ago.
We have always been to the pool alot as a family but it's only over the last 6 months that I have felt he had enough confidence in the water to go for lessons.

Officially they start age 6 at the place we go to because they think most children are too uncoordinated before then.

I understand your concerns re water safety, but I don't think a reluctant child is going to learn to swim however many lessons you force them to.

Make swimming, bathing, showering fun times to make being in water a good thing.

Review every school term or so and offer him the chance to take up lessons when he's ready.

Agree with piscesmoon. Don't worry about formal lessons, but do keep going to the swimming pool to encourage water confidence. My DC1 had a similar problem with formal lessons so we found a pool that had a 'beach' type area where the water starts really shallow and gets gradually deeper. I took him every week. At first he would only sit on my knee in the shallow water (as long as no water touched him lol) but eventually he got braver and braver... When he turned 6, he came home one day saying his friend was having swimming lessons and could he have them!! He now (age 10) swims like a little fish.

So I think you are definitely right not to force him into something he doesn't want to do (swimming pools are big and scary when you are little imo!) but swimming is really important so if you can, ease him gently into it...... Good luck

My ds was a similar age and hated swimming lessons to the extent that he sat on the side of the pool and cried refusing to get in the water. After much consideration we stopped the lessons and started them at a different time so that he could be in a group with a child he knew from school, he has loved it ever since. We have moved house in the meantime and he has started afresh with a group of children that he didn't know and he is thriving.

Forcing will have the opposite effect to the one you want-you have to get water confidence first. It maybe that you have to start with not actually getting in but taking something like a watering can to fill and empty on the side. The important thing is to go very regularly and make it fun.

Message withdrawn

Thank you all for your posts. My instinct is not to push it but, where I live at least, children are having lessons from baby-/toddlerhood almost universally. I thought I must be missing a trick. It is an important skill to learn, but you're right: when the child is ready.

DS isn't anti going to swimming pools - he enjoys them. He'll come on flumes on my lap (where this is allowed), and will doggy paddle out of his depth/swim a length with armbands on. He doesn't like water on his face, but considering he's never had a lesson, he's pretty confident (with armbands). He just absolutely doesn't want the formality/separation/big groups of lessons.

I'd second Pitchounette on time spent in pools being the biggest factor. We were on holiday two years ago and the weather was so foul that we spent all our time in the indoor pool. DS's water confidence soared - that's when he figured out how to doggypaddle and swam a length of the "grown-up" pool (with his armbands on). I couldn't believe it!

Back home, our local pool is very boring and always cold, so we don't go there. The next nearest decent ones are 45 minutes away, so we don't go very often. I'm going to figure out how we could go more often and simply get DS's confidence up for now. We'll revisit lessons later on.

Thanks again for your posts.