Swimming is beneficial for people of all ages, starting with infants and going all the way up to seniors with health issues. It’s no doubt that learning how to swim will help your child on all accounts, but what is the right time for that? Some might say that the proper time is when you’ll be able to afford swimming lessons. If you’re having financial difficulties, why don’t you try this William Hill promo code 2017 to get online casino games offers? This might be your chance to pay for those lessons.
All kidding aside, when you start asking parents when should a child start how to swim, you will get very different answers. Some will say that the child should at least be in the first grade to understand what’s happening around him while others believe that the earlier, the better. Let’s review the information available out there to determine when it’s best to sign your child up for swimming lessons.
According to this study, children are most likely to learn how to swim at the age of 5 and 6. There are facilities where special coaches work with infants and toddlers aged 2-4 years. Now, don’t imagine a man with a whistle yells at children to improve their crawl technique. The idea is to remove the fear of water that prevents them afterwards from learning how to swim.
At this age, it’s not about learning techniques but getting the child used to the water. A coach is always in the pool with the kid because you can’t really leave a 2-year-old alone in there. While the AAP doesn’t recommend infants and toddlers to take swimming lessons, they are not against it per se. The AAP supports the idea that all children older than 4 should learn how to swim.
Still, it’s a mistake to leave a child unsupervised around the pool even though he knows how to swim. You can’t think of swimming lessons as a way to “drown-proof” your children. The younger ones don’t even scream when they’re drowning. They go down quietly and tragedies happen even when adults are around. Avoid these by not leaving toys around the pool and by covering it when not in use.
Learning strokes should ideally occur when the child has sufficient muscular strength and coordination to sustain a pool lap. Also, they need to be psychologically able to not lose motivation during a 30-minute session. After all, swimming is about repetitive movements and even adults get bored when they have to do laps as opposed to making jump starts or playing with a ball.
So, to conclude, when is the best time to sign your kid up for swimming lessons? Taking into account the above findings and the recommendation of the APP, we’d say that children aged 4-5 are prepared to take this step. Still, this doesn’t mean that younger children should not be familiarised with water under strict adult supervision to prevent the development of a phobia later on.