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Know These Five Keys to Kids’ Learning to Get a Head Start When You’re Teaching Children to Swim

If you know how kids learn, teaching them to swim becomes much easier. Here are the five keys to kids’ learning.

Kids learn by playing

When kids—and adults, for that matter—play, they explore situations beyond what they’ve actually experienced, develop problem-solving skills, and create new neural networks. When they’re creating huge towers out of blocks, they’re learning physics. When they play princess or imagine being cats, they’re learning sociology and psychology. When they play with plants or bugs, they’re learning biology. They’re also learning how to think, they’re learning about themselves and other people, and they’re creating friendships with the people they play with. Playing is a safe way for the brain to learn, because you can use your imagination without risk.

You can take advantage of this by using your imagination to create games and ways of looking at the lessons you’re teaching that turn them into play. You can make improving form a game. This is also a chance for you to play yourself and to play with your child. (If you need ideas, check out the 150+ games and activities I’ve put together to help.)

Kids learn by figuring it out themselves

Kids learn best by thinking and solving problems. When kids figure things out themselves, they remember what they learn better and longer. Help and encourage your kids to explore, and point them gently in the directions that will be more useful to them.

Kids learn in short spurts

Kids can focus intensely, but their attention spans aren’t as long as adults’ attention spans. Short and frequent lessons are better than long, occasional sessions. If you have easy access to a pool, two or three fifteen- or twenty-minute lessons a day would be ideal. (Don’t worry, three fifteen-minute lessons a week will yield progress, too. It just won’t be as fast.)

Kids need lots of practice

Practice is key. Studies have shown that complete mastery of a skill takes around ten thousand hours of practice. Most of our kids won’t achieve this level of mastery in their swimming even as adults, but each hour of practice brings them that much closer to the level of skill they need to be safe and confident in the water.

Provide as much opportunity to practice as possible, and make sure that a good chunk of that is unstructured.

Kids sometimes get stuck

Plateaus are normal. So are setbacks. Sometimes increased awareness of what’s going on can actually make performance worse for a while, but that awareness is critical. It’s part of the learning process.

Your child might get frustrated or discouraged at this point and want to stop trying. At first, he wasn’t aware of the mistakes he was making. Now that he’s got more awareness, he’s able to focus on the mistakes he was making before but just didn’t notice. Encourage him and let him know that the experience is part of getting better. It’s the perfect time to incorporate a game into practice.

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The Four Things That Contribute to How Fast Your Kids Learn to Swim

You’ll have a head start when you’re teaching your kids to swim if you understand some underlying ideas about how kids learn in general. First, consider the four things that contribute to how fast and how well your kids learn to swim.

Learning a skill has several stages. First, you have to think about it, or get the idea of what you’re learning. Next, you have to practice it until you can do it. Finally, you have to master it to the extent that you can not only do it without thinking but also adapt it to other situations. This process isn’t always smooth or sequential. Understanding each of these pieces can help you make the process effective, though.

Technique

Make sure your kids really understand what you’re teaching before they start to practice. Practicing something incorrectly is counterproductive. It pays to spend extra time on understanding how to do something right upfront, even if it means not practicing the skill. The right things done consistently and carefully are cumulative. It’s better not to practice than to drill doing the skill wrong.

Amount of practice

The more practice they get, the more quickly your kids will learn. They should practice only as long in one session as they’re able to perform the skill they’re working on correctly, as far as their physical development allows.

Consistency of practice

Frequent, short practice sessions yield better, more lasting results than infrequent marathon sessions.

Attitude

If your kids are having fun and looking forward to each lesson, they’ll learn faster and better.

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Time to Play! Side Breathing

Kids learn by playing. The more you can make 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.  Turning your head to breathe when you swim is a skill that will transform your child from an okay swimmer to a solid swimmer. Here’s a game to make grasping the concept fun.

Have your child pretend to be a log rolling in the water from stomach to back to stomach again. (I know, I know. Logs don’t have stomachs.) Have him do it himself. Now you roll him.

This game really helps with the idea that you turn your head, keeping it in line with the rest of your body instead of lifting it. It also reinforces the involvement of the rest of the body, helping your child learn to involve the torso and core in the rotation for breathing.

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What to Expect When You’re Teaching Elementary School Kids to Swim

Kids in elementary school are fully equipped physically and mentally to learn to swim. How can you make the most of their developmental readiness at every stage when you’re teaching them to swim?

Six years old

At six, kids’ fine and gross motor skills are well developed. They’re good at skipping, throwing, and maybe catching. At this stage, you’ll start to see swimming that resembles somewhat coordinated strokes.

Other kids their age become an important part of their lives at this stage. If you can schedule play time with other kids in the water, you’ll help motivate your kids to learn to swim. Keep lessons as distraction-free as possible, though. Try to schedule swimming lessons when there aren’t friends around.

Seven and eight years old

  • Kids this age are often very curious.
  • They’ve become good communicators.
  • They have a strong sense of fair play.
  • They can learn rules.
  • They do well with developing and practicing skills.
  • They’re learning to cope with frustration.
  • They’ll also be likely to be afraid of the water if they haven’t had experience with it before. They’ll need a lot of time and a gradual approach to get past this fear.

It’s always important to be honest and keep your promises when you’re teaching kids to swim. Kids this age are especially slow to forgive a broken commitment. If you say you’ll let them choose the game at the end of the lesson, follow through, even if it means cutting instruction time short.

9 years old and up

Kids this age are usually very coordinated and good at listening and evaluating. Their minds and bodies are primed for learning physical skills. Just make sure to keep it fun when you’re teaching them to swim, and you’ll do fine.

At this stage, kids can handle longer swimming lessons, but they’ll still get tired and cold much faster than adults. Keep lesson lengths reasonable for your kids. Be sure to watch them carefully for signs of discomfort or fatigue. Kids this age can get so wrapped up in activities that they don’t realize they’re overtired until it’s too late.