Safety, joy and an early start are key words if you want to support your child in becoming familiar with water and learning to swim of the Lifeguard Class Online. A new free online tool helps you with fun exercises from when your child is around 2 years old.
Start with baby swimming when the child is 2 months old
Already when your child is around 2 months old, you can start going to baby swimming. And it's a really good idea to start so early,
"If we start early to make our children safe in water, we give them the best conditions for learning to swim."
Why baby swimming?
Before the infant was born, it was surrounded by amniotic fluid in the mother's womb. By starting baby swimming early, we can maintain the calming and stimulating effect that the water has on the child. The infant is also born with a reflex that naturally closes the mouth and throat when the face comes into contact with water. The reflex will disappear if not maintained. We can e.g. see this when the child experiences discomfort when diving and imitates others holding their nose, which is not appropriate. It is therefore a good idea to stimulate the child early on with water in the face and dive with it – and at the same time avoid showing discomfort with water in the face.
New learning tool from around the age of 2
When the child approaches the age of 2, help is available , which was created in collaboration between the Lifeguard Classes Swimming Association .
"Around the age of 2, most children are mentally and physically at a place where they can understand and repeat the small exercises, but if you have the courage and the child seems ready, you can easily try earlier," says Patrick Lilies, who has helped develop the tool.
Lifeguard swimming focuses on 4 basic skills that are central when your child is to start acquiring swimming skills:
Element change: Moving from solid ground to water is often a big sensory and motor challenge because the body behaves differently.
Breathing: Here, the ability to draw air in above water, hold your breath and exhale underwater is trained.
Balance: When the child e.g. lies and floats in changing positions, it develops the balance, which is necessary to be able to move in a controlled manner in the water.
Movement : The child must learn to move forward in the water on his own.
For each of the 4 areas, there are 16 exercises at different levels with and without equipment, which you will most often find in the swimming pool. The exercises are both described and shown with a short video, so they are easy to understand.
Learn more about swimming: Babies breathe underwater
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