Common Mistakes Parents make when giving their Children Swimming Lessons
When the time comes to give your kids swimming lessons, you can either hire a private coach, or buy swimming coaching packages at the local YMCA or fitness center, or save money and teach them yourself.
Kids have a lot to gain by learning how to swim and it is never too early to get them started with swimming. If you do choose to teach them swimming, you need to brush up on your own skills first, have a lot of patience, and avoid the common mistakes during your coaching sessions. Some of those mistakes are –
- Not recognizing poor body mechanics
When teaching your kids how to swim, you have to constantly evaluate their body mechanics. You should know the correct positions of their hands, legs, head, body, hips, etc. Even though you’re not training competitive swimmers, but you shouldn’t treat your kids anything less than that. If you are teaching them a particular stroke, you should educate them with every little detail involved with the stroke, and the body mechanics are the most important parts of it.
- Not giving enough importance to the kick
When you’re teaching your kids how to swim, it can be easy to become so consumed by the arms that you forget about the kick. Swimming is more than just arms. In fact, swimming is more about the kick as kicking aids in propulsion, floating, and balance. When you’re teaching your kids how to swim, don’t allow them to kick like a drowning scorpion. You should make sure their legs are as straight as possible and that their kicking is controlled.
- Over-reliance on online drill videos
While it is true you can find useful drills and other information online that’ll help you teach your kids how to swim but you must know what you’re looking for. Videos should always be seen as supplemental resources. These videos are posted by professional coaches, which you aren’t. What these videos also miss are the basics, which are sometimes the key points. You need to know the basics including body mechanics, breathing, and mistakes that kids are expected to make.
- Pushing too hard too soon
There is a massive difference between pushing your kid to sheer exhausting and pushing them to succeed. Once you have begun swimming lessons with your kid, you shouldn’t expect them to be perfect with every skill or stroke the first time around. Learning how to swim takes time and you should never push them to the point of frustration or else your kid will not want to learn swimming. Try to keep the lessons short and remember not to start off with bio-mechanic analysis and personal training from the first day itself. Make it fun!
- Fear of scaring your kids
Who would want to scare their kids by making them go underwater without assistance, but inevitably, you have to. Swimming has a lot of benefits for everyone. Even babies can benefit from getting comfortable with water. However, you shouldn’t skip out the water safety exercises because you cannot bear the thought of your kids crying.
