Swimming- lane etiquette for kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

The girl’s English is just fine. She’s one of the fastest swimmers on the team and knows it, so it’s not naïveté. I think she just enjoys the rush of passing someone. I’m going to have to coaches intervene because that’s cool during a race but awful during a practice. It’s a small lane so it’s not like there are 10 kids constantly re-sorting themselves- they all know where the coach has asked them to go and how they rank against each other.

[Anonymous]

My kid swims with PAC and when I’ve watched practice there doesn’t seem to be lane etiquette. None of the kids seems to be jerks but they don’t swim up one side and down the other, they are just all over the place. I don’t get it either.

[Anonymous]

In my opinion, teaching lane etiquette is on the coaches when the kids are 10 and under. Some kids just want to be first in line without understanding that it’s a traffic flow issue. My son had some trouble with this in his once per week winter program last year. The assertive girls would insist on going first and he would get stuck behind them. I tried to tell him to stand up for himself and insist on going first he is running them over, and to move back if they are doing something he isn’t as good at and they start running him over. But it annoyed me that the coaches weren’t paying attention to the dynamics. You can’t expect young kids to understand this innately.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid swims with PAC and when I’ve watched practice there doesn’t seem to be lane etiquette. None of the kids seems to be jerks but they don’t swim up one side and down the other, they are just all over the place. I don’t get it either.

They don’t even circle swim? No sarcasm at all when I say what has the swimming world come to if coaches witness this and don’t freak out.

On the other hand this explains the consistent idiocy I encounter during open lap swim.

[Anonymous]

Just tell your daughter to hang to the back at each practice and be one of the last. Don't go first. Simple.