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Survival Swimming Skills. There is a tendency for parents to get caught up in how far their children can swim, rather than to focus on how long their child is able to stay afloat or if their child can get out of danger if required.
Are parents confused as to the relative importance of their child becoming a strong ‘technical’ swimmer as opposed to becoming a strong ‘survivor’?
Water survival skills are super important to prevent drowning accident. Data from American Academic Pediatrics noted that in 2014, among children 1 to 4 years old who died from an unintentional injury, one-third died from drowning.
American Academic Pediatrics also suggests that water survival skills training helps reduce drowning risk for children between ages one and four.
If water-survival skills are indeed regarded as so important, swimming lessons should not only how to teach the child to swim laps with correct technique, but should also equip them with the necessary skills to assist their survival in water.
As a parent you also can teach water survival skills to your children. Although, according to American Academic Pediatrics is not suggested to teach 1 year old infant swim lesson, but you can teach them water survival skill to equip them for minor thing that would happen to them in water and also to build they readiness to have swim lesson later.
The earlier you start teaching or introduce your child water survival skills, the more natural those skills become. If you teach or introduce your child from infancy, the confidence they gain becomes a hard-wired part of their development, leading to skills that last a lifetime.
If you’re unsure of what the survival skills should consist of, here are 6 great ones to start with:
Create a Relaxed Environment
The goal of survival swim is to teach children to remain calm and rely on their learned skills when they encounter water. As parent you need to create a calm environment in which they can learn.
The goal is to create comfortable and relaxed environment in the water is to combating fear. Fear is a leading cause of drowning, when an unskilled child encounters the water, the unfamiliarity leads to fear, which becomes panic.
Float & Tread Water
Teaching your child to float or tread water for at least one minute can be a huge survival skill. You can teach your children how to back float and front float. Back float could be the most scary thing for your children for the beginning, but once they get used with it they will enjoy it.
Treading water is also very useful for them to get use with the water environment, you can put some floating toys and let them grab it or play with it to make them get use with the water, once they get use with the water, it will build they confident with the water.
This exercises give them just enough time to float towards a wall to climb out when they fall to the water.
Swim 25 Yards
You don’t need to make your child expert in swimming, the goal here is to make them to be able to swim about 25 yards to get to the closest wall.
You can practice kicking and paddling by using floating noodle and put it under they arm and start practicing kicking and paddling.
Repetition is the key, the more they doing kicking and paddling the more they able to do it without any floating aid later, and once you see they ready, you can take off the floating aid and see how they do without it.
Climb To Exit
How to climb out of the pool is also important. Your children have to know how to climb out the pool without a ladder.
You can practice this by putting their hand on the edge of the pool’s wall, then ask them to put their two elbow on the top of the wall, tummy up, then one leg up.
While practicing this, you can also train them to hang on the wall and move along the edge of the wall to shallow part of the pool.
Jump Feet First Then Grab The Wall
You can train your child to grab the wall immediately after they fall to the pool. You can ask them to jump feet first then after they come up to the surface, ask them to right away grab the wall.
Hold Their Breath
To make your children able to hold their breathe under the water is hard to do, but possible. One way that you can do is by pouring water on their face, you can use cup or you can use your hand, once they get use with it you can put some sinking toys in shallow water and ask them to go under to get it.