How do you teach a toddler to swim? Make them afraid of water!

Good day fellow hydrophobes. Today I will speak about the dangers of trying to teaching kids how to swim.

I recently have seen an PSA that attempts to teach kids how to swim. Firstly, it starts with a woman unceremoniously pouring a cup of water over over an infants head in the bath, while saying swimming lessons begin in the bath as the poor young girl looks to be in distress as she struggles, as the woman says that the bath should be drained after before Baby is out of the tub, well duh. Unless the kid is a ritual sacrifice or the parents were brain dead, that would not happen.

Why do people with their PSA's talk down to folk like they are stupid? I see an alligator I'm not going to f'in cuddle it, when it comes to teaching kids to swim it doesn't start with the bath, it starts with a f'in swimming instructor.

How would you feel if some idiot patronised you because you couldn't teach your kid long division? It's insulting to doting parents who watch their kids like a hawk.

I wouldn't set an infant on fire to teach parents about fire safety, that is all.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

My practice through teaching my children and grandchildren is to be in the water with them experiencing the joy of the water. With that I have always assured them that all they need to do to be safe is to follow one simple rule.

Don't breathe under water. I show them how to hold their breath and demonstrate going under and coming up fine. Over and over again, making a game of it until they want to try it themselves. From then on it's all academic as far as strokes and sruff, once the fear is out of the way.

So my was is to NOT make them afraid of the water. There will come a point when they think they are capable of more than they are and that is the time when we need to watch them very carefully. Sooner or later they will venture out into the deep and at that point, with us watching they will realize that they are on their own and that moment will teach them the respect, not the fear, of water that they will need to finally go diving in the Bahamas.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

I was afraid of the swimming pool when I was a kid. Was afraid to learn how to swim. At 5 years old my dad picked me up tossed me in an d I have been an excellent swimmer ever since.

Just do what they did to me, throw them in the shallow end, they’ll figure it out.
If you see they’re struggling, water-wing time.

Plenty of pictures of 2 year old me prancing in the pool.
Kids learn by doing, theory doesn’t mean jack to most of them.

No idea what a PSA is? Some kind of scuba license?

a reply to: cognizant420

At five, one of my sons had been through what I mentioned above. So one afternoon he was in the shallow end, got out and then jumped into the deep end. He flailed about but remembered not to breathe under the water and finally I came and got him as he was coming to realize his limits. And of course I was watching the whole time.

The way I learned to swim was not through lessons. I was fooling around in the shallow end of the lake we were at, and thought I would relax my body enough laying on the water, to slowly sink to the bottom. When I realized I wasn’t sinking like I wanted to, I understand the buoyancy of water much better , and that’s when the real swimming started.

I sink like a stone; I always have. First my feet go. Then the rest of me follows. I still learned to swim just fine.

Our son is having a tougher time of it. He isn't terribly physically coordinated, and sometimes you have to break things down to their component parts for him to catch on. Once he's got it though; he takes right off. The trick is getting him slowed down enough in the water to get him to catch on.

originally posted by: GreenGunther

No idea what a PSA is? Some kind of scuba license?

Public Service Announcement. OP does not like the method shown, though it works just fine.

originally posted by: Thecakeisalie
...
Why do people with their PSA's talk down to folk like they are stupid? I see an alligator I'm not going to f'in cuddle it, when it comes to teaching kids to swim it doesn't start with the bath, it starts with a f'in swimming instructor.

How would you feel if some idiot patronised you because you couldn't teach your kid long division? It's insulting to doting parents who watch their kids like a hawk.

I wouldn't set an infant on fire to teach parents about fire safety, that is all.

That, I think, is the pertinent question. This isn't about the best way to teach kids to swim; it's about why PSAs and other informational channels talk down to people. Am I right?

First, many (if not most) people probably are pretty stupid.

Second, if you talk down to people and speak them like they are idiots , and if you can do it from some kind of perceived place of authority, most people will believe you, assume they are stupid, stop thinking and just turn the brainwork over to you.

Case in point: There was a massive PSA campaign years ago about not cutting your vegetables on the same surface as your meat. Now, that's just common sense for anybody with more than one brain cell, if you are going to make salad with those vegetables.

I was preparing a meal and had just cut raw meat on a cutting board. The board was wet, a little bloody. While the meat was searing, I was cutting some onions that were destined to go into the same pot with the meat and be cooked for quite a while. My wife had a fit. She'd seen something on TV about not cutting vegetables on the same surface as raw meat and she just went nuts. "YOU CAN'T DO THAT! YOU HAVE TO GET ANOTHER CUTTING BOARD! YOU'RE GONNA KILL US ALL!"

I asked her what the commotion was about, knowing full well what she was getting at. She proceeded to parrot what she'd heard on the TV about cutting meat. I stopped her mid-thought. "Do you not realized that these onions are going to go into the same pot with the meat? They will cook in the same juices over the same heat. If there's anything in the meat that got onto the onions, it'll die in the same fire. If it doesn't then the meat will kill us, anyway."

I saw the dim light come on in her eyes. "Oh ... yeah."

Many people are like this. They just choose to let somebody else do their thinking for them.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

My sister tossed me into the lake at 7 years of age and yelled swim!

I hated her guts but I learned how to swim real fast.

I've been told kids automatically hold their breath underwater. Some people blow in their face (it supposedly makes them hold their breath instinctually, IDK, maybe it's too much garlic, coffee & cigs..?) and then dunk them under water. I've never seen that but I've heard this. I know 5 month olds that love the water and they learned to hold their breath (very short) with a quick bob under the water. Positive reinforcement when they come up would probably help, making a big deal of the accomplishment and be all happy for them.

I'm sure there's some that will say kids can't hold their breath until they can talk and are taught to, but I sincerely think that is wrong.

yeah... so many PSAs are just aggravating. Especially when they are flat out wrong. The most important thing when related to swimming, is teaching people how to relax in the water. I swam in college, I coached people from the level of just learning to swim to college athletes, as well as life guarded.

The absolute hardest person to teach how to swim is someone who can not relax in the water. Thrashing around with the natural panic reaction, though it will keep you above the surface for a bit, is absolutely horrible for staying alive due to the amount of energy it takes.

I had an acquaintance in high school that was deathly afraid of water, and he was in my gym class when we had the swimming portion of the year. I was the person who had to attempt to get him to calm down and relax in the water since the gym teacher had no idea what he was doing, which took a full 2 weeks of classes. I managed to finally get him to be able to not thrash around as much and to do a doggy paddle so he would have a fighting chance at staying afloat. The worst part about it is after every class he would apologize to me profusely, and I had to re-assure him that it was fine and I actually preferred trying to teach him to swim over the bs the gym teacher had the rest of the class doing.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof
as far as i have seen, kids naturally hold their breath under water. Another hard part when related to swimming is teaching someone to be comfortable enough to breath out when their face is in the water. The reason for this is if you are breathing out when your face is underwater, you have more time to breath in when your face is above the water. It takes a lot of energy for non-experienced swimmers to keep their head above the water, and the less time their head is required to be above the water the better. It is very very hard to break that habit of not exhaling when under water, and breaking that habit gets people much more relaxed in the water.

originally posted by: cognizant420
a reply to: Thecakeisalie

I was afraid of the swimming pool when I was a kid. Was afraid to learn how to swim. At 5 years old my dad picked me up tossed me in an d I have been an excellent swimmer ever since.

LMAO, we must have the same dad because that's what mine did XD

Still remember it like yesterday -- a campground on a lake somewhere just across the MI border in Ontario, on an RVing vacation north of the border and I must have been 4-ish, because my younger brother was still in diapers. My dad said one way or the other, I was learning to swim that trip. Picked me up on the dock and plunked me in. Hopped right in himself, too, so it's not like he just stood there & watched me flounder. I floundered, yes, but after about 5 minutes, I was paddling all over the place.

Everyone has an innate knowledge of how to swim built right in, and sometimes it's kickstarted in high gear as soon as you hit water. That was the case for my older kid, she was padding around the bathtub as a baby (seriously, the kid is part fish, I swear) and is naturally a VERY strong swimmer. I always considered myself a really good one, but she's damn near competition good.

Younger kid, not so much. One trip to the beach as a toddler and being bowled over by a wave at the shore (rolling backward head over heels no less, right out of a comedy sketch) and she had no love for the water, period. It took her until she was 8 to actually physically get in any body of water beyond a bathtub, and that was only because her sister shoved her in the pool, "Just get in and swim, you weenie." < shove/sploosh! > Swam just fine right away, woke up that built-in swim knowledge. Was pretty pissed off at her sister, but still swam fine. Not as strong a swimmer as her sister, but still pretty good at it naturally.

a reply to: incoserv

...Second, if you talk down to people and speak them like they are idiots , and if you can do it from some kind of perceived place of authority, most people will believe you, assume they are stupid, stop thinking and just turn the brainwork over to you.

Quoted for absolute truth.

I've had to deal with a couple of local Government angencies in recent months and this is EXACTLY how they behave.

I always enjoy the confused looks on their faces when they realise that I'm not a complete dolt and that I'm still my own boss.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

I've been told kids automatically hold their breath underwater.

True, that, 👍

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

Firstly, it starts with a woman unceremoniously pouring a cup of water over over an infants head in the bath, while saying swimming lessons begin in the bath as the poor young girl looks to be in distress as she struggles, as the woman says that the bath should be drained after before Baby is out of the tub,

I'm confused... whats the problem?

I grew up on the coast. I could swim before I could ride a bike.
My mom taught me. I taught my kids.
Well the YMCA taught the youngest because I was working day and night.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

My sister—a very good mother—pours water over her 1.5 year old's head to help teach him to hold his breath. It seems to have worked.

My late best friend was taught to swim by his dad throwing him in a lake and telling him to "swim or drown."

I don't recall how I learned to swim, but I always grew up around water (lake or pool) and I don't recall having a swimming instructor teach me. Maybe a parent, if that counts.