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Why How You Explain Is As Important as What You Explain When You’re Teaching Your Kids to Swim

The first step in working with any skill is explaining what you’ll be doing, in both simple and imaginative terms. How do you explain a skill in a way that works for kids?

Use imagination and visualization.

In some ways, your body in the water is like a fish. In other ways, it’s like a boat. In other ways, it’s like a dancer. When you’re completely submerged, you’re like a fish. When you’re swimming on the surface of the water, you’re like a boat. When you’re moving all of the parts of your body in coordinated motion, you’re like a dancer.

When fish swim, they’re graceful. They’re balanced. They’re slippery. They move efficiently, with each motion propelling them through the water. A well designed boat slices through the water, creating as little resistance and drag as possible. A dancer is aware of where each part of his body is in space.

As you teach your kids each new swimming skill, use these themes of a fish, a boat, and a dancer to help describe how the skill fits into the whole. If the ideas of fish, boats, and dancers don’t float your child’s, um, boat, you can tailor your themes to incorporate your kids’ interests. Dancers and gymnasts are great examples of coordinated motion. So are baseball, basketball, and hockey players. Fish slip gracefully through the water, but so do mermaids.

Use all of your child’s senses to teach.

What does a skill look like, feel like, sound like? Maybe your child can even associate a taste or smell with a particular skill. The more hooks you can use to capture your child’s attention and imagination, the more deeply he’ll learn the skill.

Boil it down.

Once you’ve discussed the concepts in all sorts of imaginative ways, be prepared to boil down what you’re teaching your child to do into just one or two words. The background ideas of fish and boats are a foundation for his interest and understanding. The simple instruction to “blow bubbles” or kick with “knees straight” will help your child to focus in the moment on exactly what he needs to do to learn the swimming skill you’re teaching him.

If your child expresses fear, try to reframe that fear as excitement and possibility. If that doesn’t work, don’t force him to try doing what he fears. Work towards it instead. Move on to demonstrating. Backtrack to practicing skills he’s already mastered if necessary and come back to your explanation of the new skill from a new angle.

What’s next? The next element of the pattern for teaching your kids a swimming skill is demonstrating and setting an example, but before we get into that, it’s time to take a break. Tomorrow’s Friday, and Friday is time to play.

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How to Teach Your Kids to Swim: 7 Steps to a Winning Teaching Style

When you’re teaching your kids to swim, you’ll work together to bring them understanding of each skill. What are the steps you need to take to make this happen?

7 Steps to a Winning Teaching Style

Plan to teach one skill or one part of a skill at a time. For example, focus only on blowing bubbles to start. Focusing on more than one thing at a time is tough.

To teach a skill effectively, you can use a teaching pattern. This pattern is a structured way of teaching each skill. Using this structure gives you a way to think about what you’re teaching, and helps your kids know what to expect.  When they know what to expect, kids have one less new thing they need to focus on, and that frees up their attention to focus on learning the skill you’re teaching.

Here’s the basic pattern. Each of the elements will get its own post:

  • Explain
  • Demonstrate and set an example
  • Explore
  • Observe
  • Give praise and support
  • Give feedback and corrections
  • Go with the flow

Using this logical structure when you introduce a new skill gives you and your kids a framework for teaching and learning. It also gives you the freedom to have fun and be creative without worrying about what you’re going to do next. And that’s the prize we’re after—teaching your kids to swim and making it fun.

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How to Teach Your Kids to Swim: 4 Keys to Creating Atmosphere

How you set the stage for your swimming lessons will have a huge impact on how your kids feels about learning to swim, and your kids’ attitudes will determine whether they’re willing and able to learn. So how do you create an atmosphere that sets you both up for success when you’re teaching your kids to swim?

4 Keys to Creating Atmosphere

A big part of teaching happens before you open your mouth or demonstrate a single swimming skill. It starts with creating an atmosphere that makes your kids receptive to learning. Imagine the look your kids get on their face when they’re watching a clown. (Not a scary clown. A good, funny clown.) That’s the kind of excitement and anticipation you want them to have when you’re teaching them to swim.

Relax.

Plan your swimming lesson for a time when you’re not rushed or tense. Your kids can sense tension in your face and body. They pick it up and become tense, too. You need to be truly relaxed before you start to teach. If you’re not, step back to think happy thoughts or postpone your lesson until you can have the attitude you need to make the teaching and learning experience fun for everyone.

Project confidence, calm, and enthusiasm.

Make sure those feelings come through in your voice. Don’t yell. Reassure your child with jokes, laughter and hugs. Use a patient, nurturing, positive attitude. Remind yourself that making learning to swim fun isn’t only an end in itself; it’s also an important part of setting the stage for deep, thorough learning.

Having your own emotions on an even keel will also help you respond to your child. If your child is afraid or nervous, point out how close those feelings are to excitement. The way you frame his experience for him will help shape how he perceives it. The physical sensations for a little kid trying to go to sleep the night before his birthday aren’t far removed from the ones he feels when he’s getting ready to try something new. Remind him about some of his favorite activities and how there was a moment in his life when he hadn’t tried those activities yet. This could be the moment right before discovering a new favorite.

Be trustworthy. Be honest.

Let your child know what to expect, and follow through. If you say you won’t dunk him, don’t dunk him. Your child needs to be able to trust you in the water so that he’ll have enough confidence to take the risks learning to swim entails. If you break that trust, it will take a long time to regain it. It can make learning to swim very difficult, possibly even leading to a lifelong fear of the water. If you’re a trustworthy teacher, your child will trust that he’s safe in the water.

Tame your expectations.

Don’t expect your child to do it perfectly. Don’t expect him to be fast or coordinated. Don’t expect him to progress without setbacks or plateaus. If you start to get frustrated, take a break. You’re not going to teach effectively when you’re frustrated, your child won’t learn anything, and you’ll transfer your lousy mood and tension to him. Better to hop out of the pool for a few minutes and lie on your backs together watching for animals in the puffy clouds floating by.

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What You Don’t Know about Reviewing That Will Change the Way You Think about Teaching Forever

Whether you’re teaching your kids to swim or teaching them long division, you’re going to spend a lot of time reviewing things you’ve already covered. It’s easy to feel like you’re spinning your wheels when you’re reviewing, but there’s something you should know that will change the way you think about teaching forever.

What You Don’t Know about Reviewing That Will Change the Way You Think about Teaching Forever

Reviewing is the heart of the lesson. This is so important that I’ll say it again: reviewing is the heart of the lesson. The first time your child is exposed to a new skill, he only scratches its surface. When you’re teaching your child to swim, he has to listen to you, watch you, and feel his own body, all while trying to interpret your feedback and the feedback he’s getting from his body and the water. It’s a big job, and it’s a lot to process. Not all of that processing is going to take place in the pool.

After you teach your kids a new swimming skill and get out of the pool, they’ll rest and play and do other things, but they’re still thinking about the skill you introduced. They’re still getting insights into how it worked. They’re still analyzing what was going on in the pool. A whole bunch of the learning of the new skill takes place after the lesson is over. They might even dream about it!

Don’t be disappointed if the bulk of your swimming lesson is dedicated to review. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s going to help your kids really get it.