Teaching your baby to swim!!

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4 years 3 months ago #347005 by
Replied by on topic Teaching your baby to swim!!
I wouldn't let my child fall into a pool even if it may teach him to swim. There is so big possibility of any accident. B-r-r don't want even think about it.

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4 years 3 months ago #347014 by ZealotX

Lizaslife wrote: I wouldn't let my child fall into a pool even if it may teach him to swim. There is so big possibility of any accident. B-r-r don't want even think about it.


This video was disturbing to me. It just looked like parental negligence meets the cruelty of sitting there filming a child who does not want to be floating nor the star of some video on the internet which may generate views and therefore possibly money. Who is it for? The Child or the parent? For me, safety and a desire of the child to do it should come first. All my kids can swim, but it was better teaching them when they were old enough to understand and be responsible without constant supervision.

If the argument was, what if baby gets out and falls in the pool, the answer is you lock your door and cover your pool when not in use. Did the golfing father leave the gate open too? What if the baby wanders into the street? She he be taught how to dodge traffic too? Crazy. I'm sorry but this video is just bad parenting.

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4 years 3 months ago #347020 by steamboat28
I don't have any handy to link right now, but I've read about studies that say that teaching babies to swim earlier is much easier than later, as the time between floating in utero and floating in pool-ero is much shorter. In essence, they have instinctual swimming abilities that vanish with age.

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4 years 3 months ago #347023 by JamesSand

If the argument was, what if baby gets out and falls in the pool, the answer is you lock your door and cover your pool when not in use. Did the golfing father leave the gate open too? What if the baby wanders into the street? She he be taught how to dodge traffic too? Crazy. I'm sorry but this video is just bad parenting.


I have not watched the video, but I'll take exception to the "lock the door...." sort of approach

Okay, yeah, safety is a thing - but parenting is about training children, not training adults.

Locking the door and covering the pool is training adults...

FWIW, I grew up on the beach, on and around boats, and whilst my parents didn't simply throw me off the side to use as shark bait, the more long term and practical solution was to teach me to swim, not try to create a world where I didn't need to know that.


In case swimming doesn't work for you - would you rather try to teach your toddler of the dangers of grabbing random items from the bench, or simply hope they never learn how to open the kitchen door?


I'm extrapolating a little here, but since I have an almost religious belief in swimming - In some workplaces, they have signs that say you must use handrails when ascending stairs.

Not just that handrails are provided, or there is a physical barrier to prevent falls - but that you must, for your safety, put one of your hands on that rail to assist you in your balance and safety when using the well known death trap of stairs. (good luck if you're carrying more than a cup of coffee)

Seems to be, that's the sort of mentality that comes from "it's more important to have a mesh over your pool than teach your kids to swim."

Life is rough, humans are good at learning skills to survive it. Why not capitalise on the very thing that put us at the top of the food chain to start with?

What if the baby wanders into the street? She he be taught how to dodge traffic too?


Traffic isn't a....natural part of the environment. It's other humans being careless - and broadly, our whole concept of how we lay out our homes, transport and so on is pretty bad.
Of course, there is area of influence and area of concern, and unless you plan it well from the start (ie, own a decent property on a private road) there's not much you can do to change the world here.

Still, there's a lesson there, and it's not about cars specifically, but "every other human on the planet is either competition or a mindless hazard, and should be treated with suspicion"

Not sure when babies make the cognitive leap that cars are just big metal saucepans being operated by other babies that got bigger.

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