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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Do you have a bathtub she can lay in and practice in? [/quote]

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.   [/quote]

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