4 STEPS TO TEACH YOUR CHILD TO SWIM

What's going on everybody? My name is Coach Jacob. Thank you guys for hopping into our video. Today we are talking about something really important and that is the four major steps that you need to take in order to teach your child to swim. And there really is only four steps to actually get them swimming. And I'm going to go through those four steps with you inside of this video. The very first one is very easy and that's trust. They need to trust you holding them inside of the water. Trust comes, oh it doesn't look like he trusts me right there, but trust comes from exposure and how you hold them when you bring them in the pool. So this is going to be a big one for people that have older children. But if you bring them into the water holding them, you need to make sure that they feel secure, that they feel safe. You can do that while you hold them like this or if you're holding them like this, facing away from you. If they're not feeling safe or they don't feel comfortable with you holding them in the water, you may need to sit them on your arm like this so they have a nice safe place to sit. But ideally even when you're moving them around in the pool, let's say you're changing grips, you need to make sure that you do it slowly and you replace that grounding feeling another way. So look, I'm going to move him to my leg. I'm holding him up tight with my hands. He's sitting on my leg, then I remove my hands. Great job buddy. Now I want to pick him up. I'm going to grab his body, then lift him up, then bring him up here. Very good. Wow. Rafi trusts me a lot in the pool. He trusts himself a little too much, but the idea is to build trust. You need to get them in the water. You need to hold them. You need to hold them in different ways and you need to move slowly with them in the beginning. Once they get a lot better like Rafi, then you'll be able to move them around a whole lot faster, making it much more fun for your children. So number one is build trust. Once a child has trust, then you can move on to number two. If you're a swim instructor or maybe you've ever thought about becoming one, we have created something for you. If you're not a swim instructor, you can skip ahead to the rest of the video, but if you are, or like I said, if you want it to become one, then we've created a community for you. A place where you can learn everything about being a coach, connecting with experts from all over the world. We have webinars, we have online certifications, we have partnerships with tons of different companies where you get huge discounts on products, toys, equipment, or teaching lessons. You can get certified in survival swim, adaptive aquatics, and many other things inside of this. We even have completely free registration software. All you have to do is click the link in the description below. Learn more about the SSU community. Now let's get back to the video. And number two is building confidence. You need a to be confident in the water. If they have no confidence, then you're never going to get them to actually do the skill that you want them to learn. Want to jump in? Ready, set, go. As you can see, Rafi is very confident in the water. Rafi is not afraid to jump into the water from the stairs or jump off of me to the stairs by himself. You want to see that kind of confidence in the children so that way they want to learn these skills. They want to learn how to swim and you'll see them take bigger risks the more confident they are. It's not always a great thing, but it's definitely easier to teach a very confident child versus a child that is afraid or fearful. So once we have trust, then we've built up their confidence, then it's time to actually start teaching the skills. And the skills will come by you implementing teaching techniques or some sort of pattern for the child to practice their trust and their confidence with you, right? So what does that look like for Rafi? Rafi has a set routine when we go on the stairs. For him, it would be setting toys up on the wall. We'd go get one toy at a time. So for Rafi, we would go, we would collect the toy. Very good. And then we would bring the toy back to the stairs and we would put the toy away or I would let him play with it, either or. But ideally, you... Good bubbles. Ideally, you want to have a routine for your child so that way they can start practicing the skills and getting more confident in each and every one because they're practicing it every single time they get into the water. For example, you could have your child sitting on the stairs. You could start off with kicking and making big splashes, maybe making some bubbles, having fun on the stairs. Then you have them crawl out to a couple of toys and then back and then swim back to the stairs. And you just rinse and repeat this. You do this over and over and over and over and over again. And you try your best to make it fun and new every single time you do that skill. We're not changing the skills we're practicing. We're just making them, we're disguising them in different ways. That's a great way of putting it. You know, the set of stackable rings or donuts, those are great tools to use for this specific instance. Ready, set, go. So once your child trusts you, you got to start helping them build confidence in the water. Once they start having confidence in the water, you're going to start building those skills more and more by creating routines and habits in the water. And the last and final thing is about where you are swimming. This is a big one that everybody skips, but it's really important that you're swimming in a clean pool and a warm pool, especially if you have a newer child that might be a little bit afraid. You want the pool to be temperature regulated for the most part. If you live in a very warm place and it's a warm season and the water's warm, it's okay. You don't need to have a heated pool. But if you live in a colder place or your child is used to warmer temperatures, having a warm pool to practice in is going to make a massive difference. We will see you in the next superhero swim lesson. Have a super day.