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Using Your Powers of Observation to Teach Your Kids to Swim

Part of the process of learning is a feedback loop. You try something, watch how it’s going, and adjust your approach accordingly. If you don’t watch how what you’re practicing is going, you risk making a habit of bad form. How can you hone your skills of observation to help your kids practice swimming skills the right way?

First, don’t expect very young kids to learn strokes very well or to move quickly in the water. Think of how difficult other activities requiring coordination, such as throwing or kicking a ball, are for them. They’re not going to look as polished as adults when they’re little, no matter how much they practice. They’re just not developmentally ready.

Your observations and feedback, though, can help your child to get the best feel for what he’s doing and the best approximation of good form that he’s ready to achieve.

While you’re teaching your kids to swim:

  • Watch them from the front, back, side, and underneath.
  • Start by watching the whole body.
  • Look for blips in the overall rhythm and unevenness in the sides of the body.
  • Look to see if the major movements are flowing.
  • Next look at the smaller body parts involved in the movement, to see if they’re supporting or working against the overall movement.
  • Finally, watch parts of the body that aren’t specifically involved in the practice.

Even when they’re just blowing bubbles, you can look for tension in their arms and legs, so that you can help them relax. When they’re practicing kicking, you can watch not only the overall movement, the feet, the hips, and the knees, but also the position of their heads and the expressions on their faces. Use your peripheral vision to watch the quality of movement of the whole body when you’re focusing on one body part. Even if you don’t act on what you notice right away, the information you get from careful observation will be useful as your lessons progress.

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How to Use Exploration to Teach Your Kids to Swim

The more your kids direct their own learning when you’re teaching them to swim, the more engaged and ready to learn they’ll be. Instead of directing them, you need to involve them in the process of discovery, but how do you do that?

After you explain and demonstrate a swimming skill, use questions and suggestions to guide your kids through the process. This method of teaching is a little bit like being a journalist. Instead of asking yes/no questions, ask open-ended questions that give your kids a chance to use their problem-solving skills to learn to swim. For example:

Instead of:

  • Can you blow bubbles?

Try:

  • If you were going to blow bubbles, how would you start?
  • What’s your favorite way to blow bubbles?
  • Show me how you blow bubbles.
  • Let’s blow bubbles together.

Give suggestions or clues to help. Instead of saying, “Touch the water with your lips,” say, “What would happen if you touched the water with your lips?” or “How about trying to touch the water with your lips?”

Use games and imagination to reinforce and expand skills and to make repetition and practice interesting. Games and imagination engage the learner so that he practices without realizing it’s practice. Games also distract from fears and discomfort.

Has your child ever told you he’s hungry only at bedtime after the fun and activity of the day are finally over? Playing games and using imagination when you’re teaching your kids to swim will help them experience the swimming lesson as a fun, flow-state activity. They’ll want to stay in the pool and keep practicing, and they’ll want to come back tomorrow.

Kids learn by playing. Plan ahead, choosing several games to try. If one doesn’t interest your child, try another. When your child tries changing or expanding a skill you’re practicing or a game you’re playing, you might be tempted to narrow his focus. Don’t. Encourage him to try things he initiates, as long as you’re there to keep him safe.

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How to Demonstrate Swimming Skills for Safety and Success

After you explain to your kids what you’ll be teaching in the swimming lesson, it’s time to show it. Here’s how to demonstrate safely and effectively.

Demonstrating Swimming Skills Safely and Effectively

  1. Make sure your child is safe. If it’s possible to demonstrate the skill while you’re holding your child, keeping him fully supported, do that. Otherwise, make sure he’s safely out of the pool before you demonstrate.
  2. Demonstrate simply. Don’t be tempted to bust a move and show off your spectacular swimming prowess at this point. To help your child learn to swim, you want to make him feel comfortable and capable. Making the skill look manageable will help.
  3. Demonstrate just the tiny piece you’ll be focusing on. Tiny pieces that eventually can be pieced together are less intimidating and overwhelming than a complex skill demonstrated all at once.

Setting an Example

You’re not only teaching your kids swimming skills. You’re also showing them how to feel about the water and about learning to swim. You do this by how you react to what happens in the water.

  1. Don’t overreact if your kids swallow some water. Instead, show them how to cough and blow their noses, and move on.
  2. If water gets on your face or your child’s face, don’t wipe it off. Show him that it’s okay to get water on his face by leaving it there or by making a game out of painting on each other’s faces with the water that splashes from the pool.
  3. Make it fun. If you’re having fun, your child will have fun.
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Time to Play! Gliding in Streamline Position

Kids learn by playing. The more you can making learning to swim fun for your kids, the more they’ll like it, the quicker they’ll learn, and the more fun you’ll have teaching them. When you’re teaching your kids to swim, gliding in streamline or torpedo position is one of the skills that’s the most fun for you and for them. It’s usually the kids’ first taste of what it really feels like to swim. The freedom and lightness are intoxicating! It’s fun all by itself, but you can use this game to wring every last giggle from it.

Place clues around the edge of the swimming pool. Point your child to the first clue and have him glide to it. The first clue leads to the next, and so on. The last stop should have a treat: a joke, a medal, or another prize your child will like.