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Swimmer963 comments on Being a teacher - Less Wrong
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Exactly...which is why I hate it when parents wait until their kids are school-age and then sign them up for group swimming lessons when they've never set foot in a pool. It's a nightmare waiting to happen, and by the time I get them, they've usually been through enough classes with lazy or just plain incompetent instructors that they're really scared, and set in their beliefs that they can't swim. We offer parent-and-tot swimming lessons starting at age 3 months; I just wish more parents took advantage of it. Or you could do this program: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL7XOo_LyWU
I was forced to do school-age swimming lessons, which pissed me off, since I could totally swim already.
Anyway, do you have any tricks to getting them over the fear (other than the obvious and marginally effective 'encourage them to get in the water and remind them that they arent going to die')?
The best trick I've found is to get kids to try things that, to them, seem scary and impossible, but which I know that no one can actually fail at. Example: stand on the side of the deep end with them, jump in holding their hand, and push them to the surface as soon as my feet hit the bottom. They're not underwater long enough to panic, and then I'm holding them up in the deep end, and I can praise them warmly for jumping into the deep end...and even if they didn't jump entirely voluntarily, they can't exactly say 'no I didn't jump'.