Swimming lessons just not working!

[ariacoops]

My six year old has been going to swimming lessons for two years and still cannot even come close to swimming. He basically wanders up and down the pool in the beginners lesson blowing bubbles when asked but the lessons we’ve tried at two different pools seem to prioritise splashing faces, heads under water rather than the basics of staying afloat. When he is supposed to be swimming with a float he just walks along and the teachers don’t seem to help, they just prioritise getting the kids to put their faces in the water. When I’ve asked they’ve said this is just how it is taught, but every child seems to be learning to swim and moving up classes and not him. So their method must work somehow! I’m at a loss why it isn’t working for us.

Can you switch to lessons in a pool where he can't reach the floor so walking isn't an issue?

Do you go to the pool as a family? Just for fun, not for learning to swim.

Switch to private lessons in a Deeper pool. Or give up on the cost for now and just take him to the pool weekly yourself.

Can you afford 1-1 lessons? Its a bigger initial outlay but progress should be noticeably faster as your ds will have the teacher focused solely on him.

My ds spent 18 months just stuck in stage 3 - we moved him to private lessons in September and by the following July he'd moved up to stage 7

Try an independent pool or 1:1 lessons. I went with an independent pool as it was so deep my kids had to swim as they couldn’t reach the bottom!

Are they following swim England? It sounds like he hasn’t pasted stage 1 which is really about being confident in the water. I agree with PP, he needs to go swimming weekly to have fun.

My son had a year of lessons at a leisure centre and still couldn’t swim, I moved him somewhere else with smaller classes and he started to pick it up very quickly, we also did some 1:1 lessons in the school holidays.

Maybe he's got the wrong end of the stick and thinks they are trying to teach him to breathe underwater.

Support op. I feel really behind other kids with my 5 year old, but he doesn’t enjoy swimming or being splashed in the face and also gets cold, and has just had grommets, so swimming lessons are out for another year i think.

To be honest we don’t very much, I take two kids to swimming lessons once a week - on Friday- and I can’t really face doing it again. I take my little one in the mornings and eldest one after school so it’s two trips. But maybe it does need to feel more fun…

We’ve shelled out for 1-1 lessons as it’s the only way DS seems to be able to make progress. I figure that overall, it’s a similar level of investment.

Invest a bit in private lessons if you can afford to. We pay 25 quid for half an hour lesson weekly and progress has been exponential.

Unfortunately the only pool I could find that did private lessons is absolutely miles away - and it was £350 for ten weeks blocks which is just unaffordable for us atm. Might be better off just trying to teach him myself!

Have a look for a 1 week intensive course usually held at private schools where they have their own swimming pool. Mine did this instead of weekly lessons.

However, we took them swimming from being toddlers, 2 adults, 2 children so 1 child each every single week on a Sunday morning. Water confidence was learned young. It was at a hotel gym. It also meant I was only dealing with one child in the changing rooms and Dh was dealing with the other.

If you don't take them swimming to practise what they have been taught it would be like them learning a musical instrument and only having them play during the lesson with no outside playing.

It might be worth sacking off the youngest lessons if they are not working and come back to it later. But do consider making the time to take them swimming as a family.

This is my child. She's had lessons for FOUR YEARS.
She is crap.
I've been to three different swim schools and she's done two terms of 1:1 lessons. She's had periods of time having two lessons a week. We also take her weekly.

From this I've realised it is in fact her, not the swimming teacher.

If he doesn't see you all swimming and having fun as a family together he hasn't really got any motivation to learn.

My 5 yo is just doing swim crash courses in feb half term and Easter half term. Making fairly good progress considering he’s never done weekly lessons

She isn’t crap

Yes maybe we should do this instead of lessons. My three year old loves his lessons and is much more confident so don’t really want to ditch them.