Teaching a child to swim

astonsmummy

Hi
I have a son who is 4 in June, i'm ashamed to say that i took him swimming for the first time only on friday
I enquired at the pool about swimming lessons but it is £50 for a 12 weeks course and you have to pay upfront, things are a bit tight at the moment so i cant afford it, so i was wondering if i'd just be able to teach him myself?
I know it may sound like a thick question but i am not really a swimmer, last time i went swimming before friday was at the millenium in Barbados
Is there any guides out there or does anyone have any tips for me please, I feel so guilty that he cant swim or hasnt even been before, i've decided to take him at least once a week now. thnx x

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Welshlassie

astonsmummy wrote: »

Hi
I have a son who is 4 in June, i'm ashamed to say that i took him swimming for the first time only on friday
I enquired at the pool about swimming lessons but it is £50 for a 12 weeks course and you have to pay upfront, things are a bit tight at the moment so i cant afford it, so i was wondering if i'd just be able to teach him myself?
I know it may sound like a thick question but i am not really a swimmer, last time i went swimming before friday was at the millenium in Barbados
Is there any guides out there or does anyone have any tips for me please, I feel so guilty that he cant swim or hasnt even been before, i've decided to take him at least once a week now. thnx x

Swimming is a skill that is really worth given your children. If you can't swim yourself you may find it difficult to teach your son. Could you save for lessons and then pay up front when you have saved enough, so give them to him for his birthday maybe??

Just taking him each week to have a play in the water will help ensure he doesn't have a fear of water which is great, he may also pick up some skills just from observing other people in the pool.

Investigate whether there is a swimming club at your local pool, they may provide swimming lessons as part of the club and your son could then continue after he has learnt.

aliasojo

Is there any council run pools near you? They might run schemes, we pay monthly for a family membership and for that we can access loads of different council run leisure centres and we get free swimming lessons too.

moo2moo

The swimming pools here do crash courses in the school holidays, 1 lesson every day for a week for £12.

You may find that at 4 hes too young. Mine had to be 5 before they could start swimming lessons.

cheepskate_2

I enquired at the pool about swimming lessons but it is £50 for a 12 weeks course and you have to pay upfront, [/quote]


Hi
I do not know where you stay, but in our area we can get a monthly membership for children for council amenities, cost about £15.00 a month, can be cancelled with one months notice and this lets us have 2 blocks (2 swim lessons a week) of swimming lessons every 13 weeks , we also get use of loads of other facilities for the children. To get 2 blocks of swimming lessons it would cost us about £80.00 every 13 weeks.

This is not made known to people when they book the swim lessons, as i booked swim lessons for ages until i happened to stumble upon it.

Check jwith your local council swimming if they have anything like this.

gazzak_2

moo2moo wrote: »

You may find that at 4 hes too young. Mine had to be 5 before they could start swimming lessons.

Agreed. It's more important right now to get your child confident in the water, so take him to the pool as often as you can, then when he's ready for lessons and you are better off financially, he'll pick it up in no time. My eldest daughter started lessons at 6, and now at 10 she swims like a fish and loves the water.

conradmum

I'm in a very similar position. Ds3 isn't five until August but the council won't allow them into lessons until they're 5, so he can't have lessons anyway. They do have pre-schoolers classes where the mums/dads get in too, but these are in school hours, so he can't do those either!

I've been taking him myself for about 5 months. I bought one of those swim vests off eBay that has removable floats in it. I think it cost about £8. We've been gradually removing the floats and now he's down to the last two. When we went yesterday we took the vest off and he tried to swim a width without it. He didn't make it, but he did try!! (He wants to go in the swimmers only part of the pool.

Lesson may seem expensive but they aren't much more than the cost of taking them yourself. At our local pool it's about £4 a time for both of us. The advantage of not having lessons, though, is that you can go when it suits you and your child will get your one-to-one attention. Plus, it's a great bonding activity!

I wouldn't worry about not being a great swimmer yourself. At this age all they're learning is confidence in the water and trying to keep themselves afloat! I'm not a fantastic swimmer either but I'm just careful never to go out of my depth or take my eyes off ds3.

perfectlypoor

Yeah I too would say don't worry about lessons just yet. Keep taking him with you and while he is wearing armbands just let him have a 'bob about' get him to try kicking his legs while holding on to you just to get a feel of what he needs to do. Just make sure he has fun and maybe save up to pay for the lessons if there is no schemes nearby that give discount cards for young people to do activities.have fun.PP

webitha

i save an pay for my 3 to have lessons as i think being able to swim is a necessity not a luxury and it goes in my budget
my kids are 8yrs 6yrs and 3yrs as they start at 3yr where i am and it costs me £103 every 10 weeks for all three which i worked out to about £3/£4 per child per week which i dont think is too much espesh now that ive given up snmoking (3 weeks now:j)
but basically get him comfortable in the water then thats half the battle won he will be more receptive to learning if hes not scared
(sorry waffling, need more chocolate)

Surfbabe

Hi astonsmummy

Glad to see you want him to learn to swim. The most important thing to start with is to get him water confident. I teach swimming to all ages and with any age is it easy to see the children who have never been to the pool and are never taken apart from their swimming lesson. Just let him play in the water - get him used to getting his face wet, blow bubbles, sit on the bottom etc. If he isn;t confident doing this then it will be much harder to get used to a lesson where he will have to do it!!! I can;t tell you the number of lessons I've taught where at least one child has screamed fo trhe whole lesson becuase they don;t like water on their face / head or won't do this, that or the other because mummy says they don;t have to do it !!!!

Just give him the confidence to be happy playing to start with. Incidently - where abouts are you in the UK. PM if necessary and [EMAIL="I@ll"]I'll[/EMAIL] see if I can help.

MXW

I couldn't afford swimming lessons for my two boys as a single parent, so I taught then to swim myself. As the other posts have said it's important to get them confident in the water first. When they were learning to swim, part of the time at the swimming baths was fun, part learning to swim. My boy's are now 11 and 8 and are both confident swimmers! Having said all that, if you are not a good swimmer yourself, maybe it would be a good idea to save up for lessons. Good luck.