When is the right time for children to learn to swim?

Feb 2, 2022 | Testimonials

We read regular reports in our news about children (and adults) drowning in the sea, rivers and beaches.  The reasons for these incidents vary but one is definitely due to young people not having swimming skills.

Teaching children to swim is crucial to prevent drowning but when should children be enrolled for swimming classes or taught to swim by their parents? 

Amy Pedan writes the following in The Conversation:

Age four is a good time to start

Many swimming schools offer lessons for children as young as six months, and parents often feel under pressure to get kids started as early as possible. 

These lessons can help a child get used to water, learn to put their face under and learn to close their mouths. They can also be a great opportunity for parent and child to bond, as the caregiver is in the water with the child. Research has even suggested swimming in the early years can benefit physical, cognitive and language skills among three to five year olds.

But while it may be possible to teach young infants basic motor skills in water, infants cannot, and should not, be expected to know how to swim or to be able to react appropriately in emergencies.

There’s not a lot of research available on what age is the “best” time to start swim lessons. Studies from Australia suggest children start being able to master water confidence and basic aquatic locomotive skills at around four years of age, regardless of the age they are when lessons begin. 

The same researchers also reported that regardless of whether lessons began at two, three or four years of age, children achieved the skills necessary to perform freestyle (aka ‘crawl’) at five and a half years. 

There is evidence to suggest that swimming lessons improve swimming ability and behaviour around the pool in younger children (between two and four years of age) but the jury is out on how well these skills are maintained in the long term.

You may have also seen videos circulating on social media showing infants being tossed into pools and rolling over to float on their back unassisted.  Austswim, Australia’s national organization for the teaching of swimming and water safety, has advised against forced back float and submersion in favour of more developmentally appropriate strategies. 

Amy did her own research which showed a negative prior aquatic experience, which can occur during formal learn-to-swim lessons, can negatively impact a child’s achievement level. 

Consistency is key

Parents sometimes enrol their children in swimming lessons at a young age and then pull them out before minimum competencies are achieved, frustrated by the cost of lessons and the seemingly slow progress. Over the past two years, COVID has also interrupted swimming lessons and water safety education for many children.

Some will return to lessons and catch up, but some may never return—perhaps due to the cost of lessons or because the child is now focused on a different sport or activity.

So when considering whether to enrol your child in swimming lessons, consider sticking with it over the long term until your child truly has the skills to stay safe in the water.

Consider your child’s maturity level and how ready they are to learn to swim. Factor in the long-term costs associated with lessons and when that investment may provide the greatest benefit. 

Once enrolled, what’s the best way to learn?

You might be wondering what’s better: a short weekly lesson or school holiday intensives, where the child does a swim lesson every day for a week or two.

The answer may depend on your family’s schedule and what’s available in your area but even if you opt for holiday intensives, try to provide opportunities for your child to regularly practice the skills learned in the pool. The more often a child swims (formally or informally) in a pool, at the beach or at the river, the better they will do at swimming lessons. 

In addition to learning to swim, it should be very obvious that children need active adult supervision at all times when they are around water. 

 

 

 

 

Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy.  Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this  interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation. 

Image supplied by Freepik.