Swimming- lane etiquette for kids?

[Anonymous]

My DD has moved clubs and is now frequently in lanes with girls a bit faster than her, although she can hold her own during workouts. A couple of the girls repeatedly tell my daughter to go ahead of them, and then they ride her feet the whole way and/or pass her roughly mid-lap.

They’re 8 & unders and this is the kind of behavior that only the most annoying boys would pull back in my high school days. I’m not sure what to tell her. To make matters more complicated, the girls doing this speak a language that isn’t English at home and so they selectively choose when they can’t understand it during workouts, which has made it hard for both my daughter and the coaches to reorganize things. Do clubs not teach lane etiquette and select lane leaders to hold a pace anymore? What should my DD do or say?

[Anonymous]

Those girls are being rude. Since they're 8 and under, your DD should ask the coach for his/her thoughts, or you could ask the coach how to handle it.

[Anonymous]

Really rude. I would tell your daughter to hang back and be one of the last so its a non-issue.

[Anonymous]

When they tell her to go first, she should just say no. AND she should not then be on their feet.

[Anonymous]

I don't know -- these are eight and unders. I think it depends how long these kids have been swimming and how much direction they have had to swim at pace. My eight and under's time has changed a lot since starting, and I have seen this in more crowded practices b/c the coach cant keep them consistently in a paced swim for each drill -- he spaces them at the starting mark but when their are a lot of kids with changing times in a lane, especially doing back chaos ensues. I would try to explain your daughter's concern to the lane coach or site director to see if they can discuss lane etiquette - little kids are just thinking abt doing what they were told.

[Anonymous]

Maybe I’m naive but I usually look for the kinder viewpoint. These are very young girls, and quite possibly are just trying to be polite by letting the other girl go first. If she is worried about being caught/passed she should just smile and tell the other girls to go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I’m naive but I usually look for the kinder viewpoint. These are very young girls, and quite possibly are just trying to be polite by letting the other girl go first. If she is worried about being caught/passed she should just smile and tell the other girls to go.

+1

[Anonymous]

Little kids have poor spacial and body awareness. I'd relax and just let it be. If it bothers your daughter, she should have them go first.

[Anonymous]

I think the general ideas that 8 and unders have no idea what’s going on in the lanes.

I think the general rule is at the faster kids go first so if your daughter thinks there are girls who are faster than her, she should decline to go in front of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the general ideas that 8 and unders have no idea what’s going on in the lanes.

I think the general rule is at the faster kids go first so if your daughter thinks there are girls who are faster than her, she should decline to go in front of them.

That said, it’s probably all a big old mess and for all you know she was riding them and that’s why they said to get in front.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Little kids have poor spacial and body awareness. I'd relax and just let it be. If it bothers your daughter, she should have them go first.

This is true - my daughter was having the opposite issue on occasion in 8u - a slower girl would insist on going in front of her and force her to either pass her or she'd sometimes just stop in the middle to let this girl create a gap again...but every time they would stop and re-start, this girl would insist on going first. The additional dynamic here was that my daughter, although new and a year younger, was faster and think that was at play; the girl was otherwise friendly and they got along and I think it was more annoying to me than it was to my daughter, to be honest.

[Anonymous]

The girls probably aren’t any more aware of the rules than you or your DD. Tell her to let them go first every time. They will figure it out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Little kids have poor spacial and body awareness. I'd relax and just let it be. If it bothers your daughter, she should have them go first.

This is true - my daughter was having the opposite issue on occasion in 8u - a slower girl would insist on going in front of her and force her to either pass her or she'd sometimes just stop in the middle to let this girl create a gap again...but every time they would stop and re-start, this girl would insist on going first. The additional dynamic here was that my daughter, although new and a year younger, was faster and think that was at play; the girl was otherwise friendly and they got along and I think it was more annoying to me than it was to my daughter, to be honest.

This is something that is super common especially amongst the 10&U set. At that age the coaches should have some kind of awareness of what is going on in the lanes during sets. Our coaches order the kids in the lanes at that age, and they call out the kids who cheat (leave before the interval so that they can appear faster than the kid in front of them), and make sure there isn’t someone taking a front position if they can’t maintain it.

[Anonymous]

As a teacher, I’d assume the best of the other girls. I am learning a second language myself. Even missing one phoneme makes the whole sentence fall apart for me. Pools are noisy places, so I could see how sound issues could create the appearance of willful ignorance. Tell your daughter to be kind and let the faster girls go first. If it’s still a problem, tell her to ask the coach for help, assuming good intentions. Even if the girls are being purposely obtuse, you’ll win nothing by saying that out loud.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher, I’d assume the best of the other girls. I am learning a second language myself. Even missing one phoneme makes the whole sentence fall apart for me. Pools are noisy places, so I could see how sound issues could create the appearance of willful ignorance. Tell your daughter to be kind and let the faster girls go first. If it’s still a problem, tell her to ask the coach for help, assuming good intentions. Even if the girls are being purposely obtuse, you’ll win nothing by saying that out loud.

As someone who is multilingual and has bilingual kids, unless these kids are recent immigrants their English is fine and they are just saying that to the coaches/teachers because it suits them. It's not that uncommon--I was just reminiscing with a friend about how we did this in school and drove a teacher nuts speaking a language she didn't.