Thursday, April 24, 2008

swimming... clarification

The you tube video posted below is an excerpt of what is called "infant swimming resource". It is a method of infant swimming lessons that focuses on survival, or self-rescue. The idea is that because drowning is the #1 killer of US children under age 4, teaching them to float could save their life.

They start training infants as young as 6 months to hold their breath under water and then turn on their backs and float. They've been able to float for as long as 5 minutes! Around 11 months or so they get them to "swim-float-swim" until they get to the edge of the pool.

This is very different from the standard mommy/baby swim class that basically just gets kids used to the water so that when they're about 3 or 4, they will want to learn to swim. My only question with that method (which is what I've been doing so far) is whether that will give children a false confidence in their ability in the water... and possibly lead to a bad situation.

Okay, now you can tell me what you think. Leave a comment or email me.

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