In all KASS lessons breath control is established as the first priority. Once your child has mastered this, your child’s instructor will observe their head orientation. This is critical for infants and toddlers because their heads are proportionately larger than the rest of their body, which affects the efficiency with which they move through the water.
The proper head orientation and body posture for effective survival swimming is head down, with feet at the surface as a vertical posture makes it very difficult for a child to move through the water.
When children have had an extended break from lessons, we sometimes see the child swim with their head up and out of the water ie. not face down. This can be attributed to a number of factors:
GOGGLES – Wearing goggles too often can make a child reliant on them and therefore hesitant to put their face in the water unless they are wearing them. Goggles create a dependency and result in children refusing to put their face in the water in lessons. Goggle dependency can become a genuine safety issue. One of the key benefits of baby swimming and toddler swimming is to make your child as safe as possible around water. Any child, of any age, could fall into water. It is most likely that your child will be fully clothed and not wearing goggles if they ever fell into water, therefore it is important that they do not develop a mindset that they cannot swim without their goggles on. Remember, your toddler may have spent more than two years swimming as a baby without goggles.
BATH TIME. Children sometimes lie on their belly in the bath, which usually orientates their chin and head up.
STRENGTH. Your child may have discovered that they are more efficient with their swimming and they can swim with their head out of the water. This should be discouraged as it makes the child tired quicker as it is a much more inefficient way to swim. Ensure that they are able to roll and float is still extremely important to ensure that your child is as safe as possible in an aquatic environment.
If you see your child swimming with their head up and out of the water, please, don’t try to fix the problem yourself. KASS Instructors are specifically trained in how to remediate these types of behaviours, and in many instances the matter can be resolved in only a few lessons. Trying to fix the problem yourself may make matters worse, and may lead to other problems in your child’s swimming technique that could seriously affect their aquatic survival skills.
To learn more please call head office on 1800 543 779 or email [email protected]
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