What should parents keep in mind when letting children learn to swim in the summer?

Summer is a time when parents usually sign up for their kids to learn to swim. However, parents often ignore important notes to ensure the safety of the baby. 

Swimming is not only an essential life skill but also a great physical activity to help young children exercise health and prevent drowning. However, this activity is also potentially dangerous, even endangering the child's life.

In this article, aFamilyToday Health mentions notes when parents often ignore the same tips in teaching children to swim by themselves.

Notes on when children go to swimming lessons in the summer

Many parents let their children learn to swim in a pool simply because the pool is close to home, convenient for transportation, recommended by acquaintances ... Did you know this can prevent your child from really learning to swim At a quality, unsafe swimming pool, swimming instructors do not have enough teaching skills ...

1. Notes on choosing swimming pools for children

Before enrolling your child in swimming lessons at a swimming pool or gym, you should:

 Visit the pool, where you plan to register your child and learn about the pool cleaning schedule: Swimming pool hygiene is extremely important, this ensures the health of the baby. Swimming pools need to be clean, water clear, and properly cleaned regularly. In addition, the area around the lake should also be kept clean, trash cans with lids must be installed in obvious places. The delivery and changing rooms must be clean, the floors are free of standing water, the showers are free of rust or dirt, and the water is clear and clean.

Find out how many lifeguards and supervisors are in each session on duty. Make sure the number of lifeguards in the children's area always request the rescue if something goes wrong.

Lifeboat: Around the pool are equipped with full life buoys and buoys of good quality, not damaged.

Swimming Teacher: Find out which teacher will teach your child to swim and talk to them about the number of students they have to be in charge of during a lesson. Having to teach too many children in the same shift often makes the teacher unable to cover all the students, affecting the child's learning. In a teaching shift, each teacher should be in charge of only about 6-8 students.

Learn about the rules of the pool with your child, explain to them that these rules are meant to ensure the safety of everyone in the pool and remind them to always follow the rules to ensure safety.

Remind your child to comply with the rules of swimming teacher, pool manager, lifeguard ...

2. Notes when sending children to swimming lessons

Before enrolling your child to learn to swim, you need:

Consult with your pediatrician before taking swimming class if your child has health problems.

If your baby has an infection, such as a rash or problems related to ear - nose - throat disease, red eye pain, diarrhea ... you should not let your baby go to the pool. Keep your baby at home until he or she heals and the risk of infecting others is gone.

Do not let your child eat too full before going to swimming lessons: Eating too full before swimming can make children vomit when doing a lot of water activity. Therefore, you should feed your baby about 1 hour before swimming to give him enough energy to work.

Bring drinking water: Practice the habit of always carrying a bottle of water when going out, going out, exercising. Drinking enough water during exercise helps your baby avoid cramps.

When taking your child to swimming lessons, you should pay attention to this: Do not let your child change or take a bath without going into the changing room. Many people believe that the young child does not know anything, so they let him change carefree in front of everyone. This is not recommended because this way your baby will not be aware that there are parts of the body that should not be shown to others. This helps the baby to be more aware of the body, and limits the abuse.

In addition, when you let your child learn to swim, you need to observe your child, avoid strangers intentionally approaching your child with malicious intent and promptly intervene. One more note that you should not leave your child in the changing area alone.

The secret in teaching your child to swim by himself

If you can swim proficiently and want to teach your child how to swim for safety, follow these tips:

1. If your child cannot swim, teach him how to float

If your child can not swim, you should instruct him to practice swimming skills on the shore skillfully. After your child has mastered these movements, you should let them go into the pool.

When you put your child in the pool, you should teach your child how to float in the water. Remind your child to stay calm if they fall into the water, step on their feet, fan their hands and try to find a way to keep their head above the water until they are saved.

2. Once your child is floating in the water, teach him how to step on his feet, inhale through his nose and breathe out through his mouth

After your child is proficient in surface water, you should continue teaching them these skills:

Teach children to breathe through their nose and out through their mouths (blowing bubbles): This helps children breathe easily while swimming, gets used to breathing underwater and avoids drinking water.

Learn to pedal alternately to keep your body afloat.

Ideally, you should teach your child how to fan the legs on the edge of the pool, so that they can easily hold their head up above the water.

3. Don't teach your child to swim with buoys, rafts or floating objects that are easily deflated

The buoys can tear or deflate at any time, putting your baby at risk of sinking. Meanwhile, the foam sheets retain their original shape and buoyancy. Therefore, you should use a foam swim float instead of an inflatable one to ensure your child's safety.

4. Children should practice swimming at the shallow end of the pool first

Once your child is comfortable with mouth breathing and foot fanning in the water, you should teach them new skills on the shallow end of the pool. Try teaching your child:

Practice being submerged in water and try to hold your breath for 5 - 10 seconds.

Switch from standing to floating position on the water and then swim by yourself without assistance.

Glide away by using the force of the push you push against the pool wall to swim to the other side of the pool.

Teach your child how to coordinate foot and hand fan movements by holding or supporting him to float on the water. Next, you instruct the baby to fan the arms, kick their feet, and slide.

5. If your baby knows how to hold breath underwater, float fluently, you should teach your child the following skills

Swimming in the water: Teach your child to swim to the bottom of the pool and then try to swim to the other side of the pool. If the baby does not have enough breath, he can rise to the surface to breathe and continue to swim down.

You can drop the key or something that easily sinks to the bottom of the pool and ask your child to swim down to get it.

Use the learned swimming moves to bounce back.

6. Once your child can master pedal and hand fan coordination, teach him how to swim frog and backstroke

When teaching your child to swim, encourage them to coordinate hands and feet in rhythm. In addition, for swimming styles where your child has to face down (such as frog swimming, stride swimming ...), teach him how to breathe when he looks up.

For backstroke, remind your baby that he can breathe normally because his face is always above water. When your child reaches the edge of the pool, show him how to curl up, kick on the edge of the pool to reverse swim and move forward, while taking a deep breath and then continue swimming. One caveat is that when teaching children how to curl, try having them kick from the edge of the water in a bottom-up direction. This forces your child to kick their feet and fan their arms to swim.

Even if your child has been swimming proficiently, you should still remind them to follow swimming pool safety rules, not to swim alone, and especially not to swim in the wilderness.