swimming - tips on breaking down the steps to go through to make this happen

[lingle]

anyone know what the "foundational" steps would be for teaching an anxious child to swim? (DS2, nearly 6, had severe receptive language delay, ok getting into water, increasingly able to cope with water-fights/water pistols/water on face, can ride scooter and bike with stabilisers, coordination not terrific but probably within the bounds of "age appropriate").

we're going to the pool today. Do you think I'm best off just letting him stand in shallow water and blow bubbles into the water, perhaps using a reinforcer like sweets (and yes I promise I will remember to fade the reinforcer next time....though maybe I can only use an ABA style if I commit to taking him every weeek?).

I'm figuring that coping with face in water/splashes in face is the basic? so no point moving on till really comfortable with that? and then perhaps jumping up and down whilst face is in water.....?

Or should I just think "stuff it, he's progressing fast so this will all be easier in a year's time?".

not a SN question in many ways but the advice I got on bike riding on other boards was so wildly inappropriate to DS2 that I think I'm much better off asking here.

also on other boards people might wonder why DS2's main interest is checking out the variety of plumbing techniques in the pool's toilets and why he will be wearing ear defenders

I would definatly[sp] try to go as often as you can and I would use whatever you can as a reinforcer.

As for wetting his face I wouldn't go too mad over that to start with as it might put him off. Try to go when the pool is quiet, not easy I know but we often go for the last hour of the day and as people start getting out it gets really quiet.

Get him a woggle to put under his arms and see if he will walk around the pool, jump gently in the water or hop if he can.

If you walk backwards holding him and the woggle his feet might gently come off the floor, this is the first step. He doesn't need to kick or anything to start with, just float around with the woggle, the rest will follow.

He might bicycle with his legs at first, that is ok and is a natural part of the process, as he relaxes his feet will come to the surface.

I would say slowly and gently will work better in the long run and when he is happy to be in the water his confidence will increase enough to think about splashing and jumping in.

Good luck.

Oh and if you go alot and gt to know the staff, you might even be able to get a visit to the real plumbing in the plant room. I bet he would love that.

We have been given the following steps to improve DS's swimming:

Breathing

1. mouth under water and blow bubbles
2. mouth and nose under water blow bubbles
3. whole face under water and blow bubbles.

Your DS can hold onto your shoulder whilst trying the steps. Once comfortable with putting whole face under water, make sure he is only taking one breath at a time when lifting his face up.

Kicking

Have your DS's hand on your shoulders and make him kick constantly while you walk backwards. At first, you can place your hand on his chest to hold his face out of the water, while kicking.

combining kicking and breathing

Have your DS hold on to your shoulders while blowing bubbles and continuously kicking. Have your hand onto his chest to support his body from falling below water level. You can tell him to kick while blowing bubbles.

DS always loved water, we practised the steps in the bath (breathing). For us, we took DS swimming from 6 weeks, so he was very comfortable with water. Once he was comfortable putting his face under water in the bath, he was quite happy to do it in the pool.

Our local pool has a special needs session in which children with all sorts of needs can attend and allows for the child/adult to take learning at their own pace, nothing is forced and the children can all learn in their own time. Why not see if any of your local pools have this kind of session? some of then even have teachers on hand who are used to special needs and can give you advice.

My DS has just learnt to swim (with a private tutor as he was anxious), and the first thing he had to do was wet his face. (Ie standing up using his hands to wash his face), then putting his face in the water etc....

Until he is comfortable with getting his face in the water he won't be relaxed enough to learn to doggy paddle......

brilliant, thanks, just what I needed.

we did mouth in the water, jumping into shallow pool and jumping up and down at shoulder height and lying in my arms on back with ears in water and he really enjoyed it.

having this conversation first made me discipline myself and stop myself from forcing him beyond his own pace.

funnily enough, he used to kick himself around floating with a woggle but there was no natural next step - we're starting again with better foundations now i think.

Will work on whole face in water thing in bath ..... hope chlorine won't sting his eyes.

He was very impressed with the loos!

I think you have to go often, be patient, don't expect too much and have fun. The tips above are great.

I started ds in a group class a while ago as well and going together on the weekend. Ds has found it really hard and I have struggled to watch. But today we have finally had a break through and he put his whole head in the water and did a star float. It is a small step but I have grinning all day about it. We brought his cousins today (they dont go swimming often) and I think it really boosted his confidence to show them what to do. They are very bright and always ahead of him.

I also think you should definitely go as often as you can to get him used to the pool and water. He needs to use his goggles for whole face under the water thing, so that's another thing for him to get used to. Ds was not too happy about the goggles at first, but once he realised he could open his eyes under water with it on, it was plain sailing from then on. We now throw different toys down to the bottom of the pool and he gets it back (his favourite game at present).

LOL at being impressed with the loos, DS's only obsession involves the loo and flashing too. So when it's time to leave the pool, we ask him if he wants to go to the loo. He does not need telling twice to leave the pool, otherwise, he does not want to leave most of the time.

ooh yes goggles. went through the whole goggle thing with DS1 - it took ages...

I've actually started to find plumbing interesting too!

I have pleasure in deliverying the following update. The answer to my swimming question: "stuff it, he's progressing fast so this will all be easier in a year's time?" turned out to be yes.

This week we've been three times (he's nearly 7 now) and:

• he no longer cares about the toilets (result)
• he actively wants to wear goggles (result, result, result)
• he puts his entire head under water as a result of desire for entire packet of fruit pastilles (quadruple result)
• he reaches down underwater to retrieve dive sticks in carefully calibrated colour arrangements (slightly dull as he describes the arrangements but result nonetheless).

We went through a series of steps for getting into the pool - sitting on the side legs straight - then legs bent, then feet on the edge, then bottom slightly up, then crouching, then standing, then lastly not grabbing the side as he went in.

He can't actually swim yet but hey you can't have everything :)

I think I might take all the other things he finds hard and leave them for another year too (only joking ... but you know what I mean).

We have had a lot of problems getting dd1 in the pool, 6 weeks ago she would not get in at all and now she's going almost everyday.

I would let him to it at his own pace, start with him just siting on the edge with his feet in and give him a couple toys to play with (mini watering), when he is comfortable then get him in the shallow end and just let him walk around.

Dd1 has been better sinse we started taking her to the school pool at the weekends, she seems a lot more relaxed then she was having lessons at school as she can do what she wants with no preasure. She happily floats around on a huge floating frog and is getting braver each time we go, luckily the pool is open during the summer holidays so we are going almost every day. I'm not sure if she will ever actually swim (i hope she will) but at the moment i'm happy with her being confident enough to play in the pool.

That's fantastic, lingle, and thanks for the update! I have delegated teaching DS to swim to an instructor at the local swimming pool, and after two terms he is much more comfortable putting his face in the water, moves his legs and arms, still with floating aids but I think (touching wood) next year he should be able to swim unaided! It's taken a lot of time and patience (not mine, the instructor's - she's great).
How did you manage to get your DS to wear his goggles - on his eyes I mean?

how nice to hear from you sc13. How is DS? And how are you?

Ds2's sensory issues have calmed down a lot - I wonder how many of them are/were phobias arising from the language processing thing. Hand driers in are the main remaining phobia.

So the short answer is, he fully understood the purpose of goggles and was familiarised with them by his brother.

We bought some large mask-like ones on Monday before the first of our four pool trips and he just put them right on - hard to believe really when you look back.

I should try the mask-like goggles too. Your DS2 sounds like a very reasonable and smart kid; all that hard work is really paying off! My DS is fine, thanks for asking - he speaks better, understands better, has been invited to a lot of birthday parties this year. I have become a social-story fiend, especially for outings and playdates . I am ok; I'm getting divorced. Not exactly my decision, but as a good friend of mine said early on, it might be the best thing that has happened to me in recent years.
I have been wondering about how language and sensory issues affect each other - a year ago I would have said DS hardly had any sensory issues, now they seem more prominent, but also because now DS talks about them, which he didn't before.

big changes in your life then.......

good to hear that your DS is progressing so strongly. We don't do so well on the birthday party front by hey ho one can't have everything!

I think that the path to goggles started with the ear defenders. Ds2 realised that "technology" could help him and since then has been open to other technologies.....

The language and sensory issues seem to be intimately bound up not only with each other but also with the anxiety. DS2 started with a genuine sensory problem about loud noises but his hand-drier phobia is now, I'm sure, just that - a phobia, as other similar noises no longer bother him.

At the age the kids are now, it's hard to disentangle it all.

What sensory issues are coming to the fore for your DS?

The ear-defenders could be the key! DS used them briefly at school for the hand-dryer problem, which is now much less severe. if I manage to draw a parallel between why one uses those and why one uses the goggles, that might work!
Sensory issues: about the noise, what had fooled me is that DS is hypo-sensitive to some noises, and I had underestimated how hypersensitive he is to others. E.g. sometimes he finds other kids too noisy, whereas I thought he was just being asocial . Sometimes he'll be fine with a certain noise and then not fine with it after a while, as if he went into overload after a period of time. But now he is to some extent able to talk about it, and we are trying to teach him to monitor his level of stress and have an appropriate solution to it (i.e. not kick another child because they are singing in a way that does not please DS). It is always a fine line between respecting the sensitivities but also slowly nudging them towards de-sensitization. A bit like swimming really.
The real success has been with haircuts. It used to be like a scene from 'The Exorcist'. We started having a friend of a friend come to cut DS's hair at home, and a year on we are at the stage where he won't make any fuss at all.
Sometimes I think I should approach the whole thing as if it was auditory processing disorder, without wanting to add more letters to the diagnosis, but I'm not sure how effective the therapies are