Teaching baby to swim

11/21/2013

The baby bath will seem huge to you only for the first two months of your baby’s life. As soon as it becomes cramped for him, bathing can be turned from a sim­ple hygiene pro­ce­dure into a heal­ing and restora­tive one. So you need to teach your child to swim.

Teach­ing a baby to swim in infan­cy is due to a num­ber of rea­sons. After all, new­borns, lit­er­al­ly just left the aquat­ic envi­ron­ment, have innate reflex­es that are indis­pens­able for swim­ming — includ­ing the abil­i­ty to hold their breath. If you do not teach your baby to dive, then by four months this reflex will com­plete­ly fade away. Keep in mind that bathing has a ben­e­fi­cial effect on the chil­dren’s body, con­tribut­ing to the over­all strength­en­ing of mus­cles, improv­ing blood cir­cu­la­tion, and so on.

The first swim­ming les­son is a big respon­si­bil­i­ty for par­ents. Here it is impor­tant to study the rel­e­vant lit­er­a­ture as care­ful­ly as pos­si­ble, and even bet­ter — to attend spe­cial cours­es, where you will receive both the nec­es­sary instruc­tion and all the nec­es­sary skills to act in “extra­or­di­nary” sit­u­a­tions. You can also arrange with a spe­cial­ist to con­duct the first les­son under his super­vi­sion.

You can teach a baby to swim in an ordi­nary “adult” bath, to main­tain the hygiene of which you only need to peri­od­i­cal­ly wash it with soda. Too warm water is not wel­come, because the envi­ron­ment that is com­fort­able for the child will not encour­age him to swim. So the water should be invig­o­rat­ing, but not too cold. Par­ents will need a water ther­mome­ter to check the tem­per­a­ture. In the process of learn­ing, you will also have to take into account the mood of the baby — if the child is naughty, it is bet­ter to post­pone the planned event. You will be able to see seri­ous results of your work only clos­er to the year, so you will def­i­nite­ly have to be patient. When your baby grows out of the “adult” bath­room, then it will be pos­si­ble to vis­it the pool (baby group) with him.

Reg­u­lar lessons will bring a stun­ning effect — your baby will be able not only to learn to swim at an ear­ly age, but also pro­vide him­self with excel­lent health and excel­lent mood. So par­ents do not need to give up if some­thing does not work right away. After all, the effect in any case is worth all the effort, since swim­ming affects the over­all devel­op­ment of the baby and helps to strength­en his immu­ni­ty.