5 Mistakes Moms Make Teaching Baby To Swim

So you're a mom, you have a beautiful little baby boy or girl or however old your child is, you're ready to teach them how to swim. It's an exciting part of life for them and for us as parents teaching them this amazing life-saving skill in the water. Throughout this video I'm going to show you the five big mistakes that moms make when teaching their children to swim. There's a good example right there. He splashed water in his own mouth. He drank it. He inhaled some. He was coughing it out. No reaction on my end. I kept him safe while he explored himself. Be calm with your children. Don't do any of the things that you see in this video and I promise you'll get your child swimming sooner than later. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel so you can learn more things about teaching children to swim. And if you're an instructor and you're looking to connect with other coaches from around the world and learn new skills and new tactics, we have a community just for you. You can find the link to that below. And if you're a parent and you're ready to teach your child to swim and you want an entire course to learn how to do it, we have that as well. You can find all those things in the description below. Number one is early exposure. Moms and parents are not exposing their children young enough to the water. Rafi started his journey at eight days old in the bathtub. I was getting him on his back. I was drizzling water just a tiny bit on his forehead, down his face, really getting Rafi used to the water. That definitely helped in getting Rafi to where he is today. So getting your child exposed as early as possible is definitely a massive benefit. I hear all the time parents don't maybe don't even have bathtubs in their in their units or wherever they're living or whatever their situation is. You can buy a bathtub on Amazon. You can put it inside of your shower. There's really no reason that you can't expose them a little bit to water when they're young. Rafi took baths when he was only or I mean showers when he was only two weeks old, three weeks old with me. Just a little bit of water drizzling down the face and on the body. Those things are really going to help get your child prepared for swimming. Number two is being a I understand it's your pride and joy. It's a life in our hands that we have to protect and keep safe but there is a limit. We need to let them do dangerous things carefully. So I let Rafi hold on to the wall. I let him dip his own face in the water, make those mistakes. Rafi's 12 months old. He needs to learn how to be safe in and around the water. So I don't let him do it too much. We play a little bit and then I'm not over-protecting Rafi. We go to the stairs. Rafi's got to put his hands down. He's going to stand up. The water is pretty deep here but I'm going to let him kind of bounce around and play. It's great to let the little ones walk around on the stairs, crawl in and out, in and out. This will help them understand their balance, help increase their motor development skills and teach them how to be in and around the water a whole lot faster. Don't be so over-protective. Keep them safe. Watch them closely but let them make the mistakes. Children will learn from their mistakes faster than they'll learn by you teaching them or telling them. Just remember don't be so over-protective. He did a great job turning himself around. It looked like he was about to fall there. We don't overreact. We let him figure it out. He put his hand there. He found his balance and he's learning how to maneuver on the stairs quite well at only 12 months old. Number three, do not overreact. Overreacting only carries over to them. They don't know how to handle a situation. They will look to you to learn how to handle them. As you can see with Rafi, I show zero to no emotions other than excitement when he does something right. Obviously that wasn't right so no excitement there. The most important thing is to not overreact. They will feed off of that and it can cause only further issues and fear of the water. This is why early exposure is so so important because he fell in. He drank a bunch of water. He burped the water out. He's fine. Some children will get very scared or upset if that happens but if you do it a lot when they're young get them used to it. You're not going to have any issues. Number four is how you hold your child in the water. As you can see I'm always keeping Rafi facing away from me at least most of the time. If I need to show him something I'll do it holding him out here in front of me like this and I'll put him underwater this way. Ready, set, go. That way I can see his face and make sure he takes that breath before we go under and then when we're moving around the pool or doing things in the water I keep him facing away from me holding underneath those armpits or if he's upset or having a hard time I'll sit him on my knee. I actually have my legs crossed right here and it's actually pretty easy and comfortable on my back to hold him in this way. If he's really really upset I'll switch to this hold right here where I got my hands underneath the arms and my or one arm underneath his hands here and one arm under the butt cheek to cheek so I can talk to him and love him and then we can just add on to this. It's really easy to build a child outward. It's difficult to take a child from here turn them all the way around and then start doing the drills so it's much easier to always build outwards and to always keep them facing away from you. If your child is really struggling or really having a hard time it may be the right thing to do to introduce them to the pool holding towards you but if you can do your best to keep them always facing away from you. Number five is do your best to avoid flotation devices and any kind of swim aid in most situations. There are some swim aids that I recommend for specific situations you have four or five children and it's really hard to watch them all then I understand I get it. If you want to teach your child to swim to avoid them at least in the beginning your child is a little older and very scared and nervous it may actually help build confidence in the beginning but just try to avoid using puddle jumpers as those force that child to be vertical in the water which is the drowning position. Try to stick to products like the Kaizen Kids 321 swim pack or the swim fin that really help the child stay horizontal in the water and definitely don't use any flotation devices on the really little ones. I would only recommend swim aids that again help the child stay horizontal for the older kids three and up to help with confidence and getting their face in the water and them swimming forward but do your best to avoid flotation devices. Those are the five things that you absolutely do not want to do if you're getting ready or you're preparing your child to learn how to swim. I promise you if you avoid those five things when getting your child ready to swim or preparing your child for swimming your child's going to learn a whole lot faster than somebody that doesn't. But if you want to learn the five things that you absolutely should do make sure that you're subscribed to our channel because that video is coming out next week. I can't wait to share it with all of you guys. Don't forget if you're a parent you're ready to teach your child to swim and you just don't know how or where to start this channel teaches you everything you need to know. You get full support from me inside of our online courses anytime to help get your child swimming faster. I'll see you guys in the next superhero swim video.