Swimming Week - Swimming lessons

Ok, confession time.  I love swimming and always have although, and here is the confession, my first love is actually synchronised swimming.  There's usually laughter at this point which always annoys me from people who have never tried it, it's hard!!  I am and always have been a water baby and this is something my husband and I really want to pass on to our children.  He swam whilst growing up too and we actually met through the university swimming team.  One of my earliest memories is crying on the side of the pool because my brother was having swimming lessons and I was too young to get in (remember in the '80's that lessons started at 5).

We started introducing water to our children like most people do through bathtime. Our daughter hated the first couple of baths but our son has always loved it, I will always wonder if this is because he was born in the water? I've talked about this book before but one of the reasons I love it is that it gives you prompts for bathtime on the appropriate weeks to splash them or put a bit of water over their head.  We did this and also let the children splash lots in the bath to get them used to water.  My second confession is that I'm actually a qualified swimming teacher but I never taught babies to swim before so when my NCT friends booked to do a water babies course I decided to join them. Now if you're a nervous swimmer, nervous about taking your child swimming or taking them under water then I really recommend doing this course.  It's not cheap but it is excellent value for money.  We only did the first course because I had to return to work part the way through the second term but the first course taught us a lot.  I would've taken my children under the water but this gave me the extra confidence to do so and gave some extra tips that I would have never known, such as if a baby is teething they usually don't like being on their back in the water.  I really valued the way they introduce water safety to the babies and how they explain to parents what they're doing and why.  I would really recommend the Water Babies course to parents.

Since I've been on maternity leave I have taken my daughter to local authority swimming lessons at our leisure centre.  I could have avoided these but it was a really cost efficient way to get her swimming and when I'm booked into a class I do attend every week.  From the beginning she was happy to be splashed and go underwater but she has just grown and grown in confidence every week.  She's happy to go jump in, go underwater and splash about.  The only thing these lessons don't have is giving mums confidence and tips to take their children under, some of them come out with dry hair which really frustrates me!!

The Swan Project will be dedicated to swimming all week and I will feature tips for swimming in the next two posts.  If you have any questions or comments then let me know!.