Swimming: Teach your kids the easy way

(Spoiler: This method also works great for anything else you want them to learn)

Parenting Matters #73

By: Catherine Lynch and Glenn Collins

Dear awesome parent,

Are you hot? We’re hot, and we’ve doubled down on our efforts to spend as much time as possible in the community pool with our grandkids. But to make that sustainable, we have to teach them to swim so we don’t have to follow them around constantly with a pool noodle to keep them from drowning. So if you’re interested in teaching your kid to swim (or anything else, really, as it’s the principles that are important) here’s our method. And just so you know, this is kid #6 that we’ve taught this way. So you know it works. 😁

“You can call me Little Fish”

That’s what our 6 y/o grandson told us after just 4 visits to the local pool. Sure, his parents had taken him to the beach a few times, but he’d just gotten his feet wet and played in the sand. Now he was swimming for real in chest deep water in a pool. And he was rightfully proud of himself.

Note: We’re not swim instructors and we don’t teach swimming strokes. Our goal is to help our grandkids swim well enough to play safely and confidently in water over their heads without flotation aids and for us to feel confident that they’re not going to drown.

So, how did this kid learn to swim in just 4 visits to the pool? As we said, we’re not swim instructors. But we know a whole lot about human nature. About motivating people. So we applied the golden triad for working with kids: trust, respect and “meet them where they are”. Then we threw in three big principles for motivating kids: fun, peers, and challenge. Dylan’s fear of the water was no match for our understanding of how to motivate kids. 😂 😂 😂

The Golden Triad of working with kids:

Trust. Dylan is a tough kid (if you’re not squeamish see this article to see how he knows this), but he had significant fears about water when we first took him to the pool. He didn’t want to go into water deeper than what he was used to at home in the tub. For us to make progress with him, first we needed to gain his trust. Once that happened, he was willing to start following our lead. To take our suggestions. To accept our challenges. He was willing to push past his fear because he knew that we were there and wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him. We helped him learn to trust us in this novel situation by playing with him and not forcing him to do anything he didn’t want to do.

Respect. We played with him while he got comfortable in the shallow end of the pool. We invited him to imitate us by doing things he didn’t even know were a possibility, like sitting on each step as the water got deeper. Picking up toys off the bottom of the pool. Jumping off the stairs. What we didn’t do was just as important as what we did do. We didn’t force him to go deeper than he was willing to go. We didn’t shame him for being afraid and saying “No.” We respected his right to say “No” to things he didn’t feel comfortable doing, ie going into deeper water.

Meet them where they are. The first time we took Dylan to the pool, he flatly refused to go into water more that 8 inches deep. Nope. No way. Not doing that. So we didn’t insist. We met him where he was literally, on the ramp in just a few inches of water. We played with him there, where he was comfortable. And there was progress - he went from playing in the ankle deep water to playing in the knee-high water. Most importantly, meeting him where he was demonstrated respect and allowed us to built trust. And he had such a good time, he didn’t want to leave and asked when we could come again.

Note: Trust, respect, and “meet them where they are” are closely related. They work together, reinforce each other, and act synergistically to supercharge your ability to get your kid to do what you want them to do.

How to (indirectly) motivate kids to do what you want them to:

Fun. Kids love to play and have fun. And they’re motivated by fun - or the fear of missing out on fun. That makes FUN one of the most potent tools in your parenting toolbox to motivate your kiddos. Luckily, you don’t have to make them have fun - they do it spontaneously if you get out of the way and let them. We encouraged Dylan to play our games in the pool with us, but we quickly noticed he was more animated, motivated, and had more fun with the water activities he thought of himself. 😂

Peers. Kids usually have far more fun with other kids than with adults or by themselves. Put kids together in a situation (like at the pool) where there’s an opportunity for play and you’re almost guaranteed that they’ll have fun. Not only that, as soon as there’s more than one kid, there’s instantly built-in competition because kids are constantly measuring themselves against other kids. In Dylan’s case, competition meant he spontaneously figured out how to swim in his desire to keep up with the other kids. When they raced, he raced. When they went underwater and held their breath, he did it too. When they got toys off the bottom of the pool, he tried too till he figured it out. He was highly motivated to figure it out, because he couldn’t bear missing out on the fun.

Challenge and Competition: Most kids can’t stand it when a peer is better at something than they are. We used this competitive spirit to our advantage by bringing a few more kids to the pool with us - kids who are far more comfortable in the water than Dylan. Kids he looks up to, wants to be like, and wants to play with. Kids who would challenge him just by their very presence playing in the pool.

We had an agenda. We wanted Dylan to be safe in the water and be able to swim confidently. But we didn’t want to force our agenda on him. We didn’t simply take him into deeper water and coerce, badger, or shame him into trying to swim. Instead, we engineered the circumstances so he wanted to learn to swim. So he wanted to go into deeper water. We invited him to play with us. We brought a playmate of his who’s already confident in the water. We brought toys and created games where they could have friendly competition. We made our agenda enticing. We set things up so that he wanted it. But we also made it invisible, or as invisible as possible, so he had nothing to rebel against. So he had no reason to say “No.”

Now contrast our teaching method with this one:

“I thought I was going to die”

While at the doctor’s office recently Glenn talked to a woman her 70’s in the waiting area. The topic turned to exercise because the woman knew that the doctor was going to tell her she needed to do more. They discussed the various types of exercise they liked and the woman confided that she’d never learned to swim.

She told him that when she was little her uncle had volunteered to teach her. She remembers being very excited because her brother could swim and it looked like lots of fun. When they got to the pool her uncle walked her around the pool to the deep end and then, without warning, picked her up and threw her in. She thrashed, gulped water, and “sank like a stone”. She remembers thinking that she was going to die.

Fortunately she was rescued by the lifeguard, but the experience traumatized her for life. Ever since she’s been terrified of doing anything where the water is over her head. No swimming. No boating. She won’t even wade at the beach because “a wave might knock me over and drag me into the deep water.”

When her aunt - who witnessed the “teaching her how to swim” incident - confronted her husband and asked him what he was thinking, he defended himself by saying “That’s how my dad taught me to swim.” He maintained that if the lifeguard hadn’t interfered she’d have been fine and would’ve learned how to swim.

We’re not fans of the uncle’s approach to teaching swimming, even if it did “work” on him when he was young.

Why not?

This approach:

• Destroyed the trust she had in her uncle.

• Showed no respect for her right to control her body or the pace at which she engaged in a new activity.

• Was truly terrifying for her.

• Accomplished the exact opposite of what it was intended to: Instead of teaching her to swim, the experience created a lifelong fear of the water.

Home Practice:

Think of something you want your kid to learn. Can you use any of our tactics to make that process easier, more fun, and less likely to have unintended consequences, like the woman in the above story experienced ?

Evening Glow

Maybe it was smoke from the Canadian wildfires, but on this evening the sky lit up with a beautiful glow as the sun sank below the horizon.