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The Hidden Flaw in Most Kids’ Swimming Lessons

Most swimming lessons have an important flaw that isn’t obvious. It’s something that you can easily avoid when you’re teaching your own kids to swim. It has everything to do with the school’s convenience and your convenience and nothing to do with the best way for kids to learn to swim. It can make the difference between your kids being willing to hop into the pool with big, goofy smiles and their whining at the mention of a lesson.

What Is This Disastrous Flaw?

Simple as it might sound, commercial swimming lessons are too long. I’ve never found one shorter than half an hour, and most are forty-five minutes or even an hour long. That’s way too long for kids.

How Long Swimming Lessons Should Last and Why

Each lesson should last fifteen to twenty minutes. If your kids seem happy to keep going and look comfortable in the water—not too cold or tired—you can spend as long as half an hour on your lesson, but that’s the exception, not the rule.

Here are the problems with longer lessons:

  1. Kids get cold. It’s one thing if they’re driving their own agenda. If they’re engaged in a rousing game of Marco Polo, they might not care that their lips have turned blue, but if you’re trying to teach them to swim, their discomfort will make it hard for your kids to have fun and retain new information.
  2. Kids get tired. It’s exhausting to practice a new physical skill. It taxes the body and the mind. A kid who might run around the park at top speed for a couple of hours in a row is using muscles in new and different ways when he’s learning to swim. He’s also having to focus on each move his body makes.

Ideally, you should work on teaching your kids to swim in short, frequent bursts. A few lessons a day at fifteen minutes each works great if you have your own pool and a wide open summer with nothing but time.

Even if that ideal isn’t practical for you, keeping lessons short and frequent—fitting in a few a week if possible—will benefit you and your kids. Your kids will learn as much in fifteen minutes as they would in a half an hour or longer, and you and your kids will all be much happier.

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1 Thing You Need to Know about Kids’ Minds to Keep Them Engaged

When you’re trying to teach your kids to swim, or to do anything else for that matter, your chances of success go up exponentially if you understand how their minds work.

1 Thing You Need to Know about Kids’ Minds to Keep Them Engaged

Kids keep trying if they’re having fun and think they’re doing well. Your job in each swimming lesson is to make sure those two conditions are met. The fun part is easy. You can spot a kid having fun a mile away. But how can you be sure your kids think they’re doing well?

Kids’ perceptions of success

In a study of 8- to 13-year-olds, the kids’ opinions of what made a good swimmer had everything to do with effort: if you’re trying your hardest, you’re good. Kids care about the process more than the outcome.

Defining success based on process instead of outcome will help your child to remain engaged and feel successful. Emphasizing the importance of practice for improvement fits how kids think about things and gives them control over their own success.

Praise your child when he’s trying, even if his efforts don’t seem to be bringing him closer to mastery. Even when it doesn’t look like he’s making progress, his body is processing the experience. He’s learning to swim, even if it doesn’t look like it. You want to keep him motivated so he keeps putting in the effort until the results show.

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4 Things about Your Kid’s Body That Affect How He Learns to Swim

It’s hard to imagine that someday the kid who hasn’t even put his face underwater in the bathtub could be stepping onto the podium to accept an Olympic gold.  Safety and fun are the most likely reasons for teaching your child to swim, but just for kicks, let’s look at what goes into being a world-class swimmer.

I’m not talking about the obvious thousands of hours of practice and high-tech equipment that athletes turn into seconds shaved from their personal records, and I’m not talking about the minute details like how great swimmers sweat and spread their fingers.

I’m talking about the basics: the swimmer’s body.

What does the world-class swimmer’s body look like? Tall and lean with long arms and a long torso, big hands, and big feet. Does that sound like your child’s body? Probably not. So what are the differences that affect how he learns to swim?

4 Things about Your Kid’s Body That Affect How He Learns to Swim

1. Head Size

If he’s anything like the average, your child’s head is large compared to the rest of his body. In our early years, our limbs grow more slowly than the head and the rest of the body.

2. Lung Capacity

Kids also have less lung capacity than adults, not only overall but also relative to body mass. The ratio of total lung capacity to BMI in an average seven-year-old boy might be 1:10. In a seventeen-year-old, 1:2.5 is typical.

3. Body Mass

A kid’s body mass isn’t like an adult’s. They have a much larger surface area to mass ratio, which means they lose body heat more quickly. Often their body fat percentage is much lower than an adult’s, and this makes them less buoyant.

Their lower lung capacity and body fat percentage make floating much tougher for kids than it is for adults. They just aren’t as buoyant.

4. Rest and Recovery Needs

Those growing bodies also mean that kids need more rest than adults do. They go hard and crash hard. Rest and recovery time are important.

The better you understand what your kids are experiencing, the easier and more effective your teaching will be. Children’s bodies are different than adults’ bodies. Understanding these differences will help you to put yourself in your child’s place and respond to his needs. Responding to your kids’ needs will help to make the learning process fun and effective for all of you.

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The Adorable Toddler Trick That Reveals Your Kids’ Swimming Ability

Try this cute trick. Ask a toddler how big he is. When he lifts his hands, they’ll only reach the top of his head. It’s adorable, but it makes it tougher for the little guy to propel his head-heavy body through the water than it is for an adult, even one who isn’t a world-class swimmer. Ask your child to lift his arms straight up. The farther they extend beyond the top of his head, the closer to an adult’s his body proportions—and his buoyancy and maneuverability in the water—are likely to be.