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What to Expect When You’re Teaching Infants to Swim

It’s never too soon to start thinking about water safety for your kids. What should you expect when you’re teaching your six- to eighteen-month-old to swim?

What You Can Expect

  • Developing comfort in the water
  • Some conceptual understanding of movement in the water

What You Shouldn’t Expect

  • Independent Swimming
  • Water Safety

How to Teach Infants to Swim

The most important things you can do when your child is this age:

  • Make sure the environment is safe
  • Give him plenty of experience in the water

Kids this age are too young to understand the danger of drowning, and they’re too young to coordinate their bodies well enough to truly swim. Just think about how they move on land. At the younger end of the range, they’ve just started crawling. At the older end, they’re toddling around. Their mental and physical development doesn’t give them the ability to swim at this point.

At this age—as at every age—making sure that they’re well supervised whenever they’re near or in water and that any pool is secured with an appropriate fence are the most important ways to keep them safe.

Once that’s taken care of, you can practice getting comfortable and learning to move in the water. You can progress to getting your child’s face wet, gliding, and floating. With enough practice, your kids will be able to toddle around in the pool as well as they do on land.

A Word about Infant Swimming

There are programs that work to teach kids this age to hold their breath underwater and flip onto their backs to float. Use common sense. Until they’re cognitively and physically ready to swim, this kind of training is unlikely to hurt them*, but only supervision will keep them safe.

Fall has come to the San Francisco Bay Area. Today is grey and drizzly, with the scent of fallen leaves in the air. Until spring, I’ll be posting three times a week and using the off days to drink hot cocoa and sit by the fire.

*There are risks associated with using infant swimming training, including the possibility that an infant will aspirate water. Use common sense. When in doubt, err on the side of caution.

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How to Make Heading for Safety Second Nature When You’re Teaching Your Kids to Swim

When you and your kids are calm and rested, it’s easy to practice good form and to think clearly. When your child is under pressure, it’s easy to panic and revert back to whatever comes naturally. How do you make heading for safety the automatic response if panic sets in?

When you’re practicing, have your child swim toward the wall or steps. Not only does it give your child something to aim for, but it’s also a good habit to build so that he’ll automatically head in that direction if he panics or needs to get out of the pool.

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Happy Labor Day! Water Safety Tips for Grownups, Too

Safety is the most important reason to teach your kids to swim, but don’t forget your own safety in the water. In honor of Labor Day, here are important water safety tips for kids and grownups alike.

  • Don’t swim alone. Swim with a friend.
  • Don’t drink while swimming (or doing other water activities like boating or waterskiing) or supervising kids.
  • Don’t use inflatable armbands or other toy-like flotation devices in place of life jackets.
  • Don’t dive in shallow water or in water of unknown depth. Spinal injuries from diving into shallow water are common in both kids and adults.
  • Don’t run on the pool deck. It can be slippery, which makes falling likely. It’s a hard enough surface to hurt you badly. That combination of slippery and hard could knock you unconscious and send you flying into the pool, so it’s a drowning risk, too. Walk on the deck instead of running.

Of course, in case of emergency, always dial 911 immediately.

Happy Labor Day, and have fun in the water.

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6 Things You Must Do to Keep Your Kids Safe in the Water

The most important reason for teaching your kids to swim is safety. Part of keeping them safe involves knowing how to supervise them when they’re in the water. These six things will help you keep them safe in the water.

Before we get into how to supervise, remember when to supervise them. It’s simple: Always.

Always supervise your kids when they’re in and around the water, even if…

  • they’re wearing  flotation devices. Flotation devices can provide a false sense of confidence for parents and kids. They’re meant for emergencies, not as a substitute for supervision.
  • your kids are water safe. No one, including adults, should swim alone, and kids shouldn’t ever swim without adult supervision.

Designate an adult supervisor. Ideally that person should have lifeguard, first aid, and CPR training. The adult should be focused on watching the kids.

6 Things You Must Do When You’re Watching Kids around Water

  • Eliminate distractions. Don’t talk on the phone or text message. Don’t read or watch TV. Don’t do yard work or fold laundry.
  • Don’t divide your attention by supervising kids who aren’t in or around the pool while you’re also supervising kids who are in or around the pool.
  • Keep talks brief and keep your eyes on your responsibility.
  • Don’t eat.
  • Don’t drink alcohol.
  • If you need to leave the pool area for any reason, even for a few seconds, make sure all of the kids are safely out of the pool and pool area while you’re away. Kids can drown in twenty seconds, and they don’t make noise when they fall into the water or start having trouble.

Make sure that babysitters also know the risks and procedures. Keep your kids safe when they’re learning to swim and when they’ve turned into Marco-Polo-playing machines, and always use common sense to reinforce and strengthen safety guidelines.