Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At that level, you need private lessons 2-3 times a week during the summer.

Not the OP but if you don't belong to a pool, this is really hard to arrange.

We belong to a summer pool and my teen has been giving lessons for years. For families who don’t belong, they add in the guest pass fee each lesson.

How does your teen advertise for this? I'd love this for my kid, but have no idea where to find this.

Some kids don't like swimming OP, I was one of them. Turns out chlorine is a problem for me.

If you don’t know how to swim you really should find adult lessons. My husband didn’t and took lessons a couple of years ago to learn. If he fell into a pool before he probably would have drowned and now he can swim to the side and he can float.

I guess I should have said kid was stuck at Glider 1 and 2 for 2 years. I was worried it would be the same with the Pro1 and Pro2 and what we would do after that.

OP here. Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm in Montgomery County. Could someone recommend a place where we can switch to for swim team or a rec center. I don't know to swim either so all these terms are new to me. My husband knows to swim and he takes them for the classes. I go sometimes and saw that the the goldfish pool was so small - my kids are 5'1" and 5'2" tall. They started out in glider 1 almost two years ago (before that we had the private lessons 3 years and then husband took them to community pool 2 years). Finally now one has moved to Pro1 two weeks ago and the other to Pro2.

I will ask my husband to switch them to the rec center if that would be better.

Totally with you OP with my 9 year old, we took 2 years off for covid also and are back, but making just a little progress. There are recenter classes and those are better for stamina as the goldfish level pools are too small.
We recently switched to big blue and here is my strategy. We missed a few classes (sick, Christmas ext) so for a month or two, we are going 2x a week, but paying for one to help with stamina. He has since January progressed a lot more and bumped up levels.
After he is able to swim 20 feet crawl and back, (I’m thinking April) we are switching to rec for the bigger pool size.

My kids were getting to the age where Goldfish was to kid-ish, despite not having achieved all the goals of Pro2. Summer swim team was too much of a time commitment for our family and never aligned with travel plans. A good compromise were weekly (or during the summer 4x per week) lessons at the local rec center. My kids progressed nicely through the levels and there are lots of options for stroke mechanics, etc. if you want to add that in. Rec center swimming was tougher than Goldfish because there was no option of touching the bottom in some of the intermediate/higher levels. This actually helped my kids to become stronger swimmers.

Anonymous wrote:At that level, you need private lessons 2-3 times a week during the summer.

I don't know about the frequency but I would definitely look for a private lesson.

Anonymous wrote:Op again. Goldfish is until 12 years. What do we do if they don't learn basics by then?

By the time they get to pro, they already know how to swim and can pass a swim test for most camps/classes. Pro is learning how to do things like breast stroke and butterfly.

A lot of kids can get stuck, and some of it is kind of instructor specific. My youngest was the only one who did goldfish, and he was stuck at gliders 2 for about six months. They are looking for you to have mastered a very specific skill, so my advice would be to just focus on that one skill.

You can also just take classes somewhere else. My eldest got very sad about never getting moved up when we were doing county classes, and I just moved her. She did fine! Since your kids can likely make it past a basic swim test (swim 25m freestyle and backstroke), you can sign them up for a developmental program with a year round swim team. Or join a pool over the summer and do the swim team there. As they get older, that will be more fun anyways. Or just drop swimming! They can swim better at this point than 90% of adults!

- mom of 4 competitive swimmers (1 at a d1 level)

If they want to continue swimming, sign them up for an age appropriate swim lesson. Goldfish is for toddlers and preschoolers.

There are lots of classes aimed at kids through the county, summer swim teams, and privately (e.g., Norman Swim, Swim Farm, etc).

I would stop lessons for a while. If I’m reading this correctly, your kid has been taking lessons from ages 4-11 and is still at the same level. It’s not working. Definitely don’t go back to Goldfish. Stop focusing on learn to swim since something else is going on.

One of my was unsuccessful with any lessons, group, private, different locations and it got to the point where he refused to go in the water. We stopped for a long time and picked it back up a couple of years later with private lessons when he became motivated to go to pools alone with friends. That’s when he learned to swim. It was his mental fear and he wasn’t ready before that. All of my attempts were making it worse.

My kids take private lessons in the summer with a high school now college swimmer in her pool once a week. Best thing I ever did. They are both great swimmers now, especially my older.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At that level, you need private lessons 2-3 times a week during the summer.

Not the OP but if you don't belong to a pool, this is really hard to arrange.

We belong to a summer pool and my teen has been giving lessons for years. For families who don’t belong, they add in the guest pass fee each lesson.

This is the way. Have them swim on the summer swim team. They will not be star competitors. That’s fine. They will become, by the end of one season, competent swimmers. Do it for more than one season. If you do it for 2-3 years, they will become very good swimmers who you will not worry over when they go swimming at a friend’s house.

Again, they may like it enough to become swim team kids, but not necessarily. None of my kids ever swam on a high school team. They are all good swimmers. They all would say they absolutely will make their own kids join a swim team to learn to swim well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At that level, you need private lessons 2-3 times a week during the summer.

Not the OP but if you don't belong to a pool, this is really hard to arrange.

We belong to a summer pool and my teen has been giving lessons for years. For families who don’t belong, they add in the guest pass fee each lesson.

They need a few days a week.