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How to Set Expectations When You’re Teaching Your Kids to Swim

It’s hard to get where you want to go if you don’t have a clearly defined goal. How do you define that goal when you’re teaching your kids to swim?

Think of what your child is capable of on land. If your baby is just learning to crawl, he’ll be able to similarly explore moving his body in the water, but don’t expect mastery. If your child can walk and run with great coordination, you can expect him to develop similar coordination in the water with practice. Keep your expectations reasonable.

Think about how much practice it took on land to develop the level of mastery your child has, though. Remember the process of learning to crawl, walk or run. At the beginning, it looked awkward and ungainly. Only with time and lots of practice did those movements become a natural way for your child’s body to move. Swimming will be the same. Keep your expectations reasonable.

Keep your expectations about form reasonable. Good form will help your child swim farther and faster, but his body might not be capable of good form. Swimming is like dance, tennis, or golf. Kids learn quickly, but until their minds and bodies are developed enough, don’t expect them to have the level of mastery you’d see in an adult.

Be aware of what it takes to achieve mastery. Athletes practice for a long time thinking about their form. At some point, it becomes second nature—internalized. Without thinking about it, they continue to improve. Learning to swim involves thinking and feeling in a very conscious way for a long time, and there’s a lot to think about and a lot to feel. At some point, the knowledge starts to move into your child’s body instead of just his head, just like walking or riding a bike. Many recent studies have pointed out that the amount of practice required to achieve mastery of a skill is ten thousand hours. It would take your child many years to get that much practice. Have you spent ten thousand hours of your life swimming? That’s an hour a day for almost thirty years. In the meantime (you know what’s coming!), keep your expectations reasonable.

Have I driven you crazy with the “keep your expectations reasonable” mantra? I’ve repeated it because it’s so important. The way your child feels about swimming will depend in large part on your feelings and your feedback. If your expectations are reasonable, you’ll feed his motivation to keep trying. If your expectations are unreasonable, you’ll be frustrated, he’ll be frustrated, neither of you will have any fun, and he’ll want to stay out of the pool and quit rather than disappoint you.

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Backtrack to Move Forward When You’re Teaching Your Kids to Swim

How can going backwards help you move forward when you’re teaching your kids to swim?

It reinforces what they’ve learned and gives them the opportunity to deepen their understanding of the swimming skill you’re working on. It also prepares them for learning the next skill without the awkwardness of not fully understanding what’s come before.

I discussed the importance of reviewing in an earlier post. Here are some steps to take to make reviewing work for you.

Set Your Expectations

Don’t expect your child to pick up where you left off at the end of the last lesson. Backtrack a bit and work up to the skills your child was working on at the end of the last lesson. If there are skills your child has already mastered, you don’t need to work on them in every lesson.

Where to Start

Start your review at the very beginning of the previous lesson’s new material and spend five to ten minutes practicing it. If your child feels really confident after the first five minutes, you can move on. If he still seems tentative, use more of your lesson on review.

Let Your Kids Riff

Try having your child experiment with doing the skill in different ways and comparing the results. Ask him to point out what he thinks works the best. Steer him away from unsafe or ineffective movements.

Play!

Ask your child how he thinks things are going. After some practice, make the skill a vehicle for play.

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Getting Your Kids into the Pool for the First Time When You’re Teaching Them to Swim

Getting into the pool can be quick and easy or it can take most of your time, depending on where you and your child are in the process. Unless getting into the pool is the new skill you’re teaching or is the recently learned skill that you’re reviewing, take just a minute or two to get into the pool together. If you’re getting into the pool together for the first time, you can use this technique to get into the pool.

Getting into the Pool

If your child does want to try getting into the pool, seat him on the edge of the pool. Keep a hand on him while you climb into the pool first. Making sure you’re stable, stand facing your child, and use both arms to transfer him from the edge of the pool into a close hug. Keep your head and your child’s head close together and at the same level to help him feel secure.

Once You’re In

Splash together, play together, and explore the feel of the water together. Don’t give in to the temptation to start a lesson. This visit is just for getting used to the water.

Getting Used to the Water

When your child is first getting used to the water, try to avoid splashing his face with water. Instead, get his face wet gently, by stroking him with your fingers. If his face does get wet, don’t wipe it off. There’s nothing wrong with getting a little wet, so don’t send a non-verbal message that says otherwise.

When You’re Teaching Your Kids to Swim, Leave Them Wanting More

Don’t push practice too long. Not only does it stop being fun, but also it’s physically less effective. If your child is tired, everything will feel harder and scarier.

The Most Important Thing

After safety, the most important thing to accomplish on your first visit to the pool is to have fun. You’re not just introducing your child to the water. You’re also introducing him to the style and approach you’ll take when you’re teaching him to swim, setting up his expectations for how he’ll feel about spending time in the pool with you, and setting in motion the development of feelings he’ll have toward swimming for the rest of his life. If it’s not fun, step back, adjust your expectations for yourself and your child, and try for fun again. Not only will it help your child learn, it’ll be…fun.

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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.