Teaching babies, or infants, to swim does not make them safer.
It is quite clear that babies under seven months do not swim, in the true sense of the word, but rather exhibit a “swimming reflex”, which is a primitive form of motor behaviour, not under the child’s conscious control. There are claims that this reflex can be regularly practiced, and this will promote early swimming. There is little evidence to support this contention, however from a safety point of view, the baby would have poor head control and could not lift their head out of the water. Virginia Hunt-Newman, recently inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame and a world authority on infant swimming, maintained at a conference in Melbourne in October 1995, that it could take up to 200 hours to train an infant to swim. Even with the baby having as many as four thirty-minute lessons a week, it would take two years by which time they would be nearly three years old.
Many programs for very young babies have not received support over the past 30 years, because they claimed that swimming skills, or reflexes to be more accurate, could make babies safer around water. It must be stated that there is no evidence to support this claim, and it can be dangerous if parents are misled. There is also no proof that swimming activities for babies will lead to superior child development in areas other than swimming.
However, there is one reason for infants from eight to fourteen months, to have some water activity experience. The new environment of water, can help develop the child’s self esteem and provides important bonding opportunities for parents and their infants. Through structured play, in an environment that encourages touching, eye contact, the water offers the opportunity for genuine excitement by parents seeing their young children learn new skills through play and the use of purpose built equipment. These experiences need to be casual, irregular and not related to formal structured programs normally associated with learning to swim and water safety.
Although most infants can become familiar with the water and some will learn to go under and possibly be able to move a short distance through the water, the main aim of the program is that parents and their children will have a happy 30 minutes of fun and play, providing a valuable base for future learning. Age is a very poor predictor of when a child can learn to swim, however, the acquisition of land based locomotor skills, such as creeping, standing, and walking certainly indicate that the child can begin to explore the skills required to move through the water . Some children can learn to move short distances through the water before 3 years of age, without buoyancy or fins, but they are more likely to get themselves into trouble, than out of it.
Ken Richter
As children are adjusted to the water, they need to be watched more, not less.
