teach – Page 31 – Teach Your Kids to Swim

September 22, 2010September 9, 2010

How to Leverage an Advantage You Have Over Every Swimming School When You’re Teaching Your Kids to Swim

Your ability to adapt your lesson plan to exactly what your child needs on any given day gives you a big advantage over swimming schools that have group lessons or college students teaching from a rote formula. How can you leverage this advantage?

Look for cues.

If your child says he’s bored or looks bored, move on to something else even if you’d planned to spend more time on the current skill. It may be that he’s approaching mastery of the skill at his level.

Take the feedback your child gives you, in words and in body language, about how he’s experiencing the lesson. If he’s tense or unhappy, ask him about it. Take a short break, play a game, or switch to a skill he’s already mastered.

If your child seems fascinated by practicing a skill or exploring something new, and you’d planned to move on to something else, let him stick with it until he’s exhausted his interest.

Follow your child.

The plan you make for each swimming lesson is a starting point. Let your child’s responses to what you’re teaching determine how closely you follow your plan. The more you follow your child’s interests, the more he’ll get out of the lesson, even if what he’s learning isn’t exactly what you thought it would be.

When you’re learning to swim, you don’t have the same level of control over your body and your life as when you’re on land. That lack of control can be stressful or scary. The more you let your child control what’s happening in the water, the more confidence he’ll have and the more comfortable he’ll feel about trying new things. The more new things he tries, the more quickly he’ll learn how his body works in the water. The better his understanding of how his body works in the water, the easier it will be to learn each new skill. Letting your child lead you away from your original lesson plan when you’re teaching him to swim can make the entire process of learning to swim go more smoothly.

September 21, 2010September 9, 2010

The Key Component of Giving Feedback When You’re Teaching Your Kids to Swim

When you’re teaching your kids to swim, there’s one key component of giving feedback that you have to use if you’re going to successful. What is it?

Touch.

Take time during the lesson to point out the physical sensations. It usually takes ten or fifteen minutes for a repetitive physical sensation to really register with your brain and muscles, but you can suggest paying attention to the sensations any time along the way. You might think this is advanced for your child, but he was doing these things himself when he learned to crawl, walk, and run.

Touch the part of your child’s body that you want him to focus on. Touch his hip while explaining that that’s where the movement of the kick comes from. Touch his thigh and explain that that’s the muscle that will be doing most of the work.

You can use your hands to help adjust your child’s body gently, guiding him to position himself. Don’t force him into position. If you feel resistance, don’t try to push past it. Use gentle touch and words.

When your kids are learning physical skills, your touch can help them to focus their attention and to feel secure as they’re learning. Also, hugs are fun!

September 20, 2010September 9, 2010

8 Surefire Steps for Giving Corrections That Don’t Lead to Tantrums When You’re Teaching Your Kids to Swim

Nobody’s perfect. You’re not going to do everything exactly right when you’re teaching your kids to swim, and they’re not going to get each skill the first time they try. The way you give feedback can make the difference between a tantrum and excited improvement. So how do you give your kids feedback that will keep them happy and help them move forward?

Keep your goal in mind.

They’re not perfect, and neither are you. Be gentle and constructive. If you find yourself getting frustrated, stop. Do something else or hop out of the pool and play a game or give each other hugs. If you’re feeling frustrated while you’re teaching your kids to swim, they’ll pick up on it, and that will make it harder for them to learn. If it’s not fun, take a break.

Be specific.

Specific praise is the most effection. The same concept applies to corrections. Be as specific as possible. Saying, “come on, you can do better” makes your child feel inadequate without giving him any help in trying to do better.

You can give feedback while your child is practicing the swimming skill you’re teaching, or you can take a break to explain, depending on how complex the idea you need to express is.

Give feedback immediately.

Give your child the feedback immediately, so that what his body is doing or has just been doing is fresh in his mind and so that he knows exactly what movement you’re talking about.

Break your feedback into steps.

Point out what is working.

I really like how hard you’re trying and how much attention you’re paying to what you’re doing.
I notice that your knees are bending a lot while you kick.
Your legs can push the water better if they stay straight.

Point out what isn’t working. Explain why it’s not working or isn’t the best approach. Make suggestions and ask for suggestions for how to improve. Include physical feedback. (More on physical feedback in the next post.)

Do you feel the air here when you kick? (At this point, you can touch your child’s foot or calf.) One way to tell when you’re keeping your legs straight is that you’ll stopping feeling the cold air there.
What ideas do you have about how to keep your legs straight?
What ideas do you have about how you’ll feel it when your legs are straight?
Show me how you kick with your legs straight.
Your legs are really staying straighter now. The changes you made really worked.

Follow up with more feedback. Use simple reminders.

After detailed feedback, you can use simple reminders as shorthand to remind your child of what you’ve already gone over together.

Great effort. Knees straight.

Give one correction at a time.

Be sure to give one correction at a time. A list of things to work on is too overwhelming. If you notice several things that need work, pick the one that you think will make the biggest difference to work on first. After your child has gotten comfortable with one change to what he’s doing, you can introduce the next.

Try exaggeration.

If your child is having trouble with a skill, try having him exaggerate what he’s doing wrong. For example, if he’s not straightening his arm to take a stroke, have him purposely keep his arms bent and tight against his sides, so that he can really feel the problem.

Give your kids permission to fail.

Trying to do it wrong also lightens the mood. You not only want to give your child permission to fail, you want to encourage it. When you’re teaching your kids to swim, you want to create an atmosphere of open exploration that will help your child to get a better understanding of his body’s relationship to the water. Making “doing it wrong” okay will help create this atmosphere. It will also give him the freedom to risk trying new things, because he won’t be afraid of the consequences of failure.

You can also try having him exaggerate what you’re asking him to do. Try having him keep his knees perfectly straight for some practice kicks on the side of the pool. Even though this would never happen in actual swimming, getting a body feel for the extreme can help him move in the direction of good form.

Try, try again (and take breaks!)

Remember to use a patient, nurturing, positive attitude. Learning is a process. It’s not always smooth or linear. Sometimes you need to try several approaches before you find one that works for your child or before what you’re trying to teach him really “clicks.” If you or your child starts to get frustrated, take a break or switch to practicing another skill or playing a game.