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The 6th Sense You Need When You Teach Your Kids to Swim

All five of your kids’ physical senses are being bombarded while they’re learning to swim. In order to help them understand their physical experience, you’ll need a sixth sense. ESP? Nope. Something you already have.

Empathy. Imagine your child’s experience of the water. It’s different from his experience on the land in almost every way.

Kids’ Sensory Experience of Swimming

The experience of swimming is dramatically different than the experience of being on dry land for all five senses.

Sight

Things look weird underwater, and the water feels strange on your eyes. Goggles help if your child is uncomfortable with these sensations.

Hearing

Your child can’t hear well underwater. Sound is muted. The feeling of water getting into his ears and draining out is strange.

Smell

Chemicals that keep the water in the pool fit for swimming can also be hard on kids’ noses. For the first ten minutes in the pool, until the awareness of the smell fades, a strong smell of chlorine can be distracting and unpleasant.

Taste

Swallowed pool water won’t taste like the water your kids are used to drinking at home.

Touch

The impact of the water on the other four senses is nothing compared to its impact on touch. It’s a bit of a cheat to call touch the fifth sense, because it’s much more than just the feel of the water on skin.

  • Weight: The feel of the water on his body is much heavier than the air he’s used to. The extra pressure on his body can feel confining.
  • Balance: The way his body balances in the water is different than it is on the land. It will make him feel less coordinated than he does on land.
  • Body Position: His body position is different in the water. On land, we’re used to aiming for an upright orientation. In water, horizontal is ideal. You can practice the idea of horizontal on land by having your child crawl or roll on the ground, just to remind him that he’s experienced this position and what it feels like.
  • Movement: Moving through the water feels different. The water resists more than air, so it’s harder to move through it. On land, our legs do most of the work moving our bodies around. In the water, our arms and torsos do most of the work.
  • Breathing: Breathing in the water is different. On land, your child doesn’t have to pay attention to the position of his head or the timing of his breathing. He just breathes whenever he needs to. In the water, he has to be aware of timing and position or risk getting a big gulp or snort of water.
  • Metabolism and heat loss: His body will lose heat faster—up to 25 times faster—in the water than it does on land. Even if he’s wearing a wet suit, he’ll be starting to cool off from the moment he gets into the water.

How Your Kids’ Sensory Experience Affects How You Teach Them to Swim

Pay attention while you’re teaching them. If it looks like they’re experiencing sensory overload, give them a break.

After they get out of the water, their brains will still be analyzing and creating a cohesive understanding of their time swimming. Rest and recovery time are important for your kids’ sensory and mental processing of their experiences in the water. Make sure to give them plenty of unstructured play and rest time out of the pool to process. Even when you’re not in the pool, they’re working on learning to swim.

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6 Truths Your Kids Know That Aren’t True in the Water

By the time they’re up and running, your kids know a lot about the world. They may not be able to explain physics concepts, but they know them. Gravity? Check. Momentum? Check.

Not all of the things your kids have learned about the world from the time they’ve spent experimenting on land are true in the water. These six characteristics of swimming make learning to swim unlike the land-based skills your kids already know. If you can help your kids understand these differences, you’ll have an easier time teaching them to swim.

6 Characteristics of Swimming That Are Different from Land-Based Skills

Finesse

Swimming isn’t about brute strength. It’s about finesse. It’s not what you’ve got; it’s how you use it. The better your child gets at swimming with good form, the less effort he’ll need to swim farther, faster. Your child knows that he can run faster if he ups his effort. You’ll need to help teach him that swimming better, not harder, will improve his performance.

Rhythm

Coordinating the movement of all the parts of the body in relationship to each other is key to swimming comfortably. Your child already knows how to do this intuitively if he can run. If he can skip, throw a ball, or kick, he’s beginning to understand this concept in a more conscious way. In swimming, the rhythm of movement determines whether you move at all in a way that it doesn’t on land. You’ll need to teach the importance of coordinated movement in swimming.

Power

Most of the power in swimming comes from the arms, the core, and the hips. The rhythm of the movement makes it work. Kicking provides stability but not much propulsion. This is exactly the opposite of land-based activities like running and biking, where the legs and core provide the power and the arms are secondary.

Drag

There’s much less resistance when you move your body through air than there is when you move through water, so reducing drag in the water is more important in swimming than it is in land-based activities. Any part of your body that’s moving forward should be slicing through the water, disturbing it as little as possible. Any part of your body that’s moving backwards should be maximizing resistance, using the water to push or pull against. When you’re teaching your kids to swim, you’ll need to give them plenty of practice and experience with what happens when they push and pull in the water.

Relaxation

A big shift in skill and ability will happen when your child learns to relax in the water. Ironically, it’s hard to relax in the water until you have enough skill to feel comfortable. You can help him by providing all the support he needs.

Ease

Nowhere is the concept of going with the flow clearer than in the water. It’s easier to go with the flow than against the flow of the water. It’s also more efficient and effective. On land, if it feels easier, it means you’re not trying harder. In swimming, making it feel easier is good.

The big picture

Keep these concepts in mind as you plan your lessons and as you spend time in and out of the pool with your child. Using these fundamentals to inform how you teach will allow your child to have the best, smoothest, fastest learning experience.