The Truth About Survival Swim

The Truth About Survival Swim

Survival swim is an amazing program that teaches babies and young children to be safe in water in weeks.  What is the point of swimming lessons when they don’t give children skills they could use if they accidentally ended up in water? Most swim programs teach children to be happy in water and build their ability over several years of continuous lessons - in all that time, children are still at risk of drowning.

Unfortunately, survival swim is not well understood in Australia.  It is not supported by Royal Life Saving and is vehemently knocked by outspoken swim coach, Laurie Lawrence. It is important to recognise what these misconceptions are and address them. I myself was totally misled about survival swim before I looked into it and discovered what it really can do for families! Too many children miss out because parents have heard horror stories about survival swim but haven’t tried it for themselves.

Misconceptions

Children are traumatised - no, they are not.  It is true that some cry during the lessons, strong-willed children will often strongly resist the lessons (just as they do with anything they are not keen on doing)!. But that is far from traumatic. Children cry for many reasons, often simply because that is the first way they learned to communicate, they have limited language ability to express themselves. They are never hurt in lessons and are taught by instructors who love children! If you love children, you couldn’t possibly traumatise them. That makes no sense.

Children throw up - I was led to believe that children are worked to the point of exhaustion and vomiting. Not true. If a child has food in their tummies when they undertake any water activity, chances are they could throw up. If a child swims on an empty tummy, that is not going to happen.

It makes children hate swimming - quite the opposite! Once they have some skills in the water, they love to swim and don’t want to get out the pool. Some children go through a short transitional phase where they choose not to swim. Often this is because their skills are new and they trust swimming with their instructor but are unsure at first about swimming with anyone else. Once they have more confidence in their own abilities, they love to swim and often mimic swimming lessons in bath time. It’s very cute 🙂

The course is expensive - lesson for lesson, it might cost more than other programs but it will be cheaper than paying for years of lessons and seeing little progress.

It’s about survival, right?

Survival swim is right for every child but not for every parent. Parents who can trust that the instructor has the skills and training to handle any child in the water, will be able to give their child the joy of swimming. A gift that could save their life. Why take a chance? Take control.