How to Reinforce Skills at Home While Your Child Learns to Swim

How to Reinforce Skills at Home While Your Child Learns to Swim

When your child is learning to swim, it’s important to remember to continue to reinforce skills at home! Practicing swim techniques at home can help your child’s muscle memory and feel more prepared for lessons. At Hamptons Swim, we recommend hitting these four key components for success when learning to swim! 

1. Mind/Body Warm Up When beginning to reinforce skills at home, any athlete knows it’s important for your mind & body to be warmed up before beginning to swim. Positive mindset techniques and practices are a great way to get your child excited about swimming! Watching your child's lessons can help you determine the best way to physically begin the lesson, whether it's kicking or splashing to warm up your child to swim. 
   

2. Practice Techniques  Focusing on specific skills at a time can help reinforce these skills while swimming. Whether you're in a bathtub or in a pool at home, demonstrating skills is the best way for your child to progress! Practicing getting your childs face wet, breath holding/blowing bubbles, and floating are great ways to start reinforcing skills.
   

3. Continue Playing After practicing specific skills, it’s important to use them in play to use the technique in action. Whether it’s using toys to encourage arm and leg movement or singing and playing games, your child will begin unconsciously practicing vital skills to help them learn to swim! (e.g. using the couch or pool to practice elbow-elbow-knee-knee or using our pancake song to practice floating.)
   

4. Emphasize Water Safety It is crucial to maintain consistency when regarding pool rules in order to teach your child how to respect and remain safe around water. By not consistently enforcing important safety measures your child may not learn when it is safe or not safe to swim. At Hamptons Swim, we emphasize the importance of waiting for an adult's approval to enter the water, never swimming alone, knowing how to enter and exit, and calling for help if necessary. If you’re not sure what other steps you should take, check out our Emergency Water Safety E-course available on our website!