Survival Swim Lessons: Should We Teach Kids To Swim Using Fear or Love?

Swimming is one of the most beneficial activities for all ages, so it's easy to decide that your young children should be introduced to the water as early in life as possible. The American Academy of Pediatrics now says that kids as young as one year old can safely begin to learn to swim, while some of the professional schools in the USA providing swimming lessons for babies have found great success with specialized introductions from just a few months old.

Drowning is the water subject that no one likes to think about, but the fact is that it's the most common cause of accidental death for children in the first four years of life. So, trying to "drown-proof" a child is a big thought in the back of every new parent's mind. The problem is that the majority of incidents happen in buckets and tubs up until the age of four, and only in swimming pools from ages after that.

There are two schools of thought about the best way to introduce babies and very young children to the water, and two types of actual schools that exist for this. One type is the traditional swimming school, and the other is what we might call survival swim lessons, which relies on self-rescue.

The question many parents have to ask themselves is, are we teaching kids to survive in accidental exposure to water, or are we teaching them to love the water as a fun environment, and to turn into water babies?

The swimming schools and the survival schools both assert that there's no such thing as drown-proofing a child, since accidents and panic continue to happen. Parents must simply be constantly vigilant at all times.

Given all this, how should parents choose to introduce their children to the water?

The Two Baby Swim Methods

"Survival swim lessons" deliberately tip or entice a baby into the swimming pool, and insist that the parent stay out of the water on the edge. With an instructor close by, the baby eventually floats on its back and waits for rescue.

By contrast, the regular swimming schools insist on having the parent in the water with the infant during its first stages of learning to teach a love of the water in the security of the arms of their parent. This seems the most crucial difference for parents to consider: do you want to be separated from your baby during this moment of insecurity, or do you want to be right there holding and engaging with your baby while they learn a new skill, as you have been since birth (and before) every step of the way?

Survival swim lessons say that an infant introduced into water will overcome fear by discovering that they can float. The swimming school says that there is no need to discover this fact in a potentially trauma-inducing way, especially when a method exists that uses loving support. 

Science, meanwhile, has no clear way to resolve this debate, since a formal clinical trial would require a cohort of babies who by definition cannot volunteer. So as parents, we are left to our own choices.

Childhood trauma can be a very elusive thing, something that can last for the entire life of the individual, and often not be recognized for decades. And while the survival swim schools cite millions of successful water introductions, testaments also exist from parents whose child was badly traumatized by self-rescue methods, sometimes developing a clear aversion to water, and sometimes reacting in other ways.

Pros and Cons

Separation from the parent during a plunge into water may be the very first time a baby has been separated from its parent, and learning water survival may not be the best time for this to happen for the child. It's a tough-love approach, and parents must decide if love will conquer the toughness. In the traditional swimming classes, this dilemma never occurs, and the approach to water ability happens gradually and always with parental support. 

Waiting to be rescued in the survival school strikes many people as counter-productive: the back float is not the same as swimming, and the swimming school teaches a baby not only to float but also to maneuver independently, and how to get into and out of the water.

The survival swim lessons typically include sessions of about 10 minutes, over a period of 4-6 weeks, and then the treatment is ended. By contrast, swimming schools have much longer sessions, in graduated classes that form a coherent curriculum aimed at the child becoming an accomplished swimmer.

The survival school says that muscle memory has been established during this short exposure. The swimming schools question if this muscle memory lasts very long (as long as childhood trauma?), and point out that this alone doesn't turn any child into an accomplished swimmer.

The swimming schools develop learned skills in children that are enthusiastically embraced and that build on previous development to get ever better and more accomplished in the water. This is a result that can keep the individual in a physically beneficial activity for a lifetime, even into old age.

Conclusion

Many parents will sign their kids up for survival swim lessons without knowing that there are completely alternate ways to teach them to be comfortable in the water. Since everyone agrees that there can be no such thing as "drown-proofing," the question arises, what goal is a parent looking for with swim lessons? It seems logical that the only goal worth pursuing in the water is to learn how to be safe around all bodies of water, entering only when given permission, and propelling to safety while enjoying the healthy experience.

The choice as parents is ours to make.