7-year-old and swimming

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have challenges with our DD, 7, and swimming. She has a huge fear of putting her face and head underwater. Totally averse to taking classes for this reason. Background: we started swimming lessons at six months! It was great. Carried on with a few classes as a toddler. Didn't do any during the pandemic. Somewhere along the line some anxiety set in. She had swimming daily in last summer's camp but was so anxious about it, it literally kept her up at night. I think some of the instructors just took a hard line and that set her off even more. She loves the beach, water, water parks, and the pool in general. Recently I've taken her to an indoor public pool and we paddle around sans floaties and time how long we can do it, play with boards, balls, etc. She's into it and does want to learn. Now I'm thinking that I should just really try to help her along, though I don't consider myself a great tutor in this subject. Anyone have a suggestion here, or even a program to follow?

I'd have her swim with adventurous friends as much as possible. The less she thinks about her anxiety and the more peer pressure the better. Once she starts to make progress, start private swim lessons.

Friends help for sure. My DD was terrified of ice skating and wouldn't try until she went with friends who were out there having fun. By the end of the day she was really getting it, no issues since.

She also has a friend with similar fears of going under water and the mom brought them to a recent pool party. The friends doing cannonballs into the pool got them jumping in by the end of the day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have challenges with our DD, 7, and swimming. She has a huge fear of putting her face and head underwater. Totally averse to taking classes for this reason. Background: we started swimming lessons at six months! It was great. Carried on with a few classes as a toddler. Didn't do any during the pandemic. Somewhere along the line some anxiety set in. She had swimming daily in last summer's camp but was so anxious about it, it literally kept her up at night. I think some of the instructors just took a hard line and that set her off even more. She loves the beach, water, water parks, and the pool in general. Recently I've taken her to an indoor public pool and we paddle around sans floaties and time how long we can do it, play with boards, balls, etc. She's into it and does want to learn. Now I'm thinking that I should just really try to help her along, though I don't consider myself a great tutor in this subject. Anyone have a suggestion here, or even a program to follow?

I'd have her swim with adventurous friends as much as possible. The less she thinks about her anxiety and the more peer pressure the better. Once she starts to make progress, start private swim lessons.

Friends help for sure. My DD was terrified of ice skating and wouldn't try until she went with friends who were out there having fun. By the end of the day she was really getting it, no issues since.

She also has a friend with similar fears of going under water and the mom brought them to a recent pool party. The friends doing cannonballs into the pool got them jumping in by the end of the day.

This is fairly kid-dependent, so I'd tread carefully with this approach. Being with friends who are more adventurous actually makes things worse for my daughter who has a phobia of putting her face in the water. She just gets embarrassed and even more anxious.

OP I have a similar issue and we made some progress with private lessons and I'm seriously considering consulting a therapist.

[Anonymous]

1. Private lessons
2. Try Swim Labs if there is one near you. They teach in personalized pools very small. My boys loved it and then they were fine with the big pools at the rec center.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks everyone for the replies and suggestions of courses. I too think DD might respond to having a friend swim with her and I’d like to try it. She is really quite intrepid and adventurous—part of what makes this so challenging.

[Anonymous]

My son liked being the water but HATED putting his face in the water. The thing that got him past it was letting him wear a snorkeling mask to swim. From there he graduated to goggles and now he's fine. One of his big motivations was that he discovered how much fun it was to jump in the pool and it's hard to do that and not get your face wet.

Not all pools allow you to swim with snorkel masks, but it was a game changer for him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you have a bathtub she can lay in and practice in?

We put a pair of goggles and later, a snorkel, with the bath toys and our kids loved playing around with them in the deep soaking tub we had at the time.

But what I would suggest is that for kids who don’t like to submerge their faces, swim lessons are not as effective and sometimes creates more anxiety. I would find a way for your 7 year old to practice putting her face and whole head underwater where she has total control over the situation. Think of it as a balance bike where she can put her feet down at any time - she can stand up whenever she wants. If you can find a pool that has a section about 3-3.5 feet deep, that is deep enough for her to be mostly submerged, but shallow enough that she can stand and breathe. I have two kids who are competitive swimmers and they both spent hours upon hours in pools like this - they would go under the water with the reassurance that they could stand and breathe. They got braver and learned how to dive to the bottom to pick up toys on their own. They were younger, like 2-4 at the time, and we didn’t do formal lessons until they were 5/6, but by then, they were very comfortable diving and swimming under water. Their teachers commented on how relaxed they were underwater and they could focus on following directions, rather than being worried or distracted about not breathing.

That was a long winded way of saying I think more play and less didactic lessons will pay off. Especially if there is anxiety involved. I’m sorry about the hard line instructor. The reason my oldest played around in pools so much without lessons is because he also had a rigid instructor at age 2 and it terrified him and we took him out and just let him play on the pool steps for ages until he wanted to go deeper. We didn’t do floaties or noodles - we just kept him in water where he could touch the bottom where he felt brave enough to experiment. In general, floaties aren’t the best because they hold kids in an upright position, which is good for preventing drowning, but bad for teaching them to swim in a horizontal position. They also can’t submerge themselves with floaties on, so it’s great that she can get around without them. You can buy swim toys that sink so she can retrieve them from the bottom. And hoops that sink so she can swim through them. I really believe that kids who are comfortable diving and swimming under water are much faster at learning conventional strokes.