Are you thinking about how to make your child comfortable around water? At Swim Generation, we believe that you can never start to too early and our Parent & Baby classes start from the age of 3 months old. Here’s our top tips for helping your child to feel comfortable in and around water…
Familiarise your child with water
The best way for your child to familiarise itself with the water is in the bath. This is a calm, happy environment for your child and it will help them stay relaxed when they move to a public pool or beach. To help your child feel comfortable with water on their face, squeeze a sponge over their head, letting the water trickle down their face and into their eyes.
Make it FUN
We ensure that our Baby & Toddler classes are always fun and use items such as floating toys and watering cans to entertain the children. The watering cans are a great way to trickle water on a child’s face! We also play games such as peek-a-boo by submerging our face in the water and coming up with a bright smile. Showing your child that it is fun to get your face wet will encourage them to do the same.
Blow bubbles & get your feet wet
Blowing bubbles is always a popular way to get your child to submerge their face and once you blow bubbles they are more likely to copy you. Once your child is feeling more confident with water, the next step would be to encourage them to get their feet wet. We do this by sitting the child on the side of the pool and letting their feet dangle into the water. We then encourage them to get into the shallow end, holding the child with one hand underneath their bottom and the other one around their back, gently easing them into the water.
More FUN ideas
Once your child is comfortable in the water, try moving them through the water. Hold onto them under their arms, facing you and walk backwards chatting to them the whole time. Go for a ride by giving them the option for you to go slower or faster through the water. Talking to the fishes is another great game to help with breathing. Do this by asking them to put their face in the water and ask an imaginary fish a question, ask them to turn their head keeping their ear in the water to listen to the fish and at the same time blow to make bubbles.
Start splashing
Once your child feels comfortable in the water, you can start practising floating and straightening their legs out behind them to help start them kicking.