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Swimming is an essential life skill and building water confidence is the first step when it comes to teaching your kids to swim.
Water confidence is all about how comfortable your kids are in water. A skill that develops over time and comes when your kids have positive experiences in and around water.
As a parent you can play a huge role in developing this confidence and teach them core water safety skills from an early age.
The sooner your kids are exposed to water, the more likely they will develop proficiency and confidence before fear of water sets in.
Easy ways to build your kids water confidence
Teaching your kids to swim is a lot easier once they’ve got confidence in the water. Take things slowly and make learning to swim as fun as possible.
1. Building water confidence in the bath
The bath this is a great place to get babies and young kids use to being in and around water.
Begin by dripping small amounts of water over the top of their head. As they become more comfortable with this, slowly increase the amount of water you pour over them.
As your kids get older, encourage them to pour water over their own head. They’ll have lots of fun doing this and will start to develop a positive relationship with water.
2. Building water confidence at the pool
When your kids are ready, take them to the local swimming pool and get them to move through the water in different ways. For example, walking forwards, backwards, jumping, running sideways etc.
This will slowly help them to develop their water confidence and teaches them how water reacts to their body when they move through the water.
It is important with everything you do that it is made into a fun experience. Use simple cues like jump like a kangaroo or run fast like a cheetah to help your kids engage more with the activity.
3. Build water confidence with breathing activities
Breathing activities are an important part of building your kids water confidence too.
Not all children understand that they cannot breathe under water, so get your kids to stand clear of the water, take a breath then get them to make big bubbles from their mouth on the surface of the water.
You can do this at the same time and perhaps have a competition to see who can blow the biggest bubbles.
When your kids need to take a breath, get them to stand back up and breathe before starting again.
Vary the game by blowing small bubbles, big bubbles, who can make bubbles for the longest etc.
Source: This article was kindly written for us by SplashSave - giving parents all the tools they need to teach their kids to swim & to ensure they grow up safe around water.
Visit
www.splashsave.co.nz to learn more about teaching your kids to swim and to
get a big discount off your SplashSave Parents Pack when you use code ‘under5s’.
