4 year old -how to progress to real swimming

[Anonymous]

My 4 year old does great in the water. She has no fear. She can float on her back. Doesn’t use floaters. Can Jump off side of pool and kick her way back to edge. Swims underwater by kicking her legs. She can jump off and swim to the bottom to grab a ring or toy. She doesn’t really know how to use her arms yet. She’s done this all on her own without lessons. How do I get her to really learn how to swim? Lessons are expensive and difficult to get into. Can I teach her myself? Any resources you’d recommend? I’m so proud of what she can do on her own and would love to foster this!

[Anonymous]

County lessons daily.

[Anonymous]

We only had success doing it with swim lessons/mini swim team but the way they did it on his mini/developmental swim team was to basically practice streamline back and forth across the pool kicking, get that streamline down really well. Then from the streamline you add in the arm movement once you have that. Seemed to work well. It takes a lot of repetition though so I think can be a bit hard to do as a parent because they just don’t tolerate instruction like that from a parent for that long. But some kids might!

What worked for us was getting a summer sitter at age 5 and doing the local swim team that has a “mini” team. It was basically lessons daily for 5 weeks for the cost of swim team (like $150). Still not easy for sure, I totally agree with you the lessons are a PAIN. For me this at least meant progress was quick instead of like weekly lessons all year which pains me

[Anonymous]

Also if you really want to do it yourself I would look at YouTube and then set up times with her like we are going to do 20 minutes of practice then play.

[Anonymous]

I had two early swimmers who sounded a lot like your kid.

Up until 4, we only "played". We didn't do anything that my kids perceived of as "work" or as "practice". Some of the things we did were jumping in and swimming across the pool to me, with my distance gradually increasing; swimming through my legs and then surfacing; diving for sticks, for in water they could stand in and later slightly over their head; getting on my back and swimming around the pool with their arms around my neck but otherwise floating freely; water slides that came out in water above their head; sharks and minnows . . . just lots of things that got them pushing their limits a little bit and swimming while I saw so they saw how my arms moved and imitated me. Games that got her surfacing, and getting their head above the water, and treading water helped. We sort of went from submerge, and swim up and grab something (mom, or the wall) to submerge, swim up and breathe and then go back to swimming, to being able to stay more on the surface. We also did a lot of just kicking the legs, underwater before adding the arms.

Then at 4 turning 5, my kids went to swim team. Both kids could swim the length of the pool in a not so pretty freestyle, so they were able to skip preteam.

[Anonymous]

To teach her strokes I would do lessons with a professional. That’s what the next step is.

[Anonymous]

One on one lessons

[Anonymous]

I would find a teenage year round swimmer for lessons

[Anonymous]

Private lessons with a teen lifeguard at a summer pool tend to be cheaper than group lessons at somewhere like Goldfish, and way more effective. My DD is also pretty fearless and motivated, at least in comparison to their older sibling. We did a few private lessons when DD was 4 last summer, and she was ready for minis this year at 5, and they’ve been teaching them freestyle and backstroke. She can swim across the pool (similar to what another PP mentioned, it’s not pretty, but she can do it!).

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks for all of this feedback! Much appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would find a teenage year round swimmer for lessons

Yes, this is what we did. If preteam isn’t an option (it wasn’t for us due to being mid morning) we asked one of the lifeguards/yr round swimmers to work with our kids 1-2xs per week at that age. By the end of the summer they could swim 25 meters without stopping so the did swim team the next year.