When you enrolled your child for swimming lessons their character might have been the last thing on your mind. Swimming is fun, it’s a great activity for exercise, and it’s an essential life skill. More often than not, these are the things people associate swimming with. While these are all generally true, there is a greater opportunity in swimming, a benefit to those who choose to make use of it. Sports have been used as a tool to develop character as well as physical skill through the ages. In this article, we’re going to focus on how you can use swimming to mold your child’s character so that they can get better at staying afloat in the water and out of it.
Learning in and out of the Pool
People never stop learning. That’s especially true with children, they’re like sponges ready to soak up lessons through all their new experiences. Children have so much to gain from regular, personal, and engaging swimming lessons because of their ability to learn. While they learn the form of freestyle, the nuance of the breaststroke, or even just learn how to stay afloat, they stand to learn so much more.
Here are just a few ways you can make swimming lessons more meaningful for both you and your child. We’ll only be going over a few, but hopefully these will give you a stroke of genius to think of the many different way you can make the most out of pool time.
The Value of Time
Keeping an appointment can almost be considered a skill. Do you know someone who always seems to be on-time or even early for meetings? Maybe you have a friend who is rarely ever late for a meet up or hang out. I doubt that when you think of these people you look down on them for being on time. Punctuality communicates that you not only value your time but also the time of the person you’re going to meet with, it is a simple but important act. Having a regular schedule for swimming lessons is an opportunity to teach your kids about the value of time, and train them in the skill of honoring a schedule.
The Order of Priorities
Swimming can be quite fun. When you have a good rapport with your teacher or if you’re highly motivated, it can be the highlight of your day. This is true particularly for athletes of the sport. Regardless, swimming classes provide a chance to communicate responsibilities or priorities in a child’s life. Setting a rule such as finishing homework before swimming lessons, or even having to skip a lesson or two to study can be a meaningful example in an adolescents life. This way you can teach them that their enjoyment of something doesn’t necessarily make it more important than other things. Even the most gifted swimmers need to maintain a grade point average to keep competing.
Actions and Consequences
This lesson might sound a little daunting even for parents, learning about consequences hasn’t always been fun. But swimming can be a fun way to teach your kids about how their actions can affect them later on. A sleepless night can greatly affect one’s performance in the pool, and afterwards the child might become frustrated. Why couldn’t they swim as well as before? Or perhaps they haven’t been eating as much as usual, and when they get into the water they have less energy as a result. These are great times to explain to them how their actions have real world consequences. Alternatively, this can be done in a more positive way by teaching them about these things after a particularly good swimming session.
People’s Differences and Equality
Swimming is a skill based activity, which means that some people are perceptibly better than others. Your child might be one of the more gifted students, easily gliding past everyone else. Or your child might have a harder time developing their stroke than the other kids and he or she is the one that’s being left behind. Even when it comes to floating, not everyone has the same level of skill. But that doesn’t mean that those who excel are better people than the ones who do not, it just means that they’re better swimmers. Helping your child understand and accept that everyone has their own unique strengths and weaknesses in swimming can translate to all other interpersonal aspects of life. It can help them be more understanding, more supportive, and more respectful. This lesson also helps them be better winners in and out of the pool.
Swimming classes are a good way for your kids to have fun, keep cool, and one day it might even save his or her life. But it can also be a means of teaching them value time, value their responsibilities, and value other people. Learning how to swim and learning how to live can happen in the same class.
Enroll your child to Noodies Swim School!
We aim to teach differently-abled students the basics of swimming through colorful play and meaningful activities. See our packages below and ENROLL TODAY!
Special Needs Class: an individualized swimming program based on therapies, school, and/or home programs (45 minutes to 1 hour)
Solo Class: (45 minutes to 1 hour)
Buddy Class: 2 students per class (45 minutes to 1 hour)
Group Class: 3 to 5 students per class (45 minutes to 1 hour)
Pool Party: Great for celebrations with a maximum number of 30 participants (2 to 3 hour program)
Waterworks: There are two programs to choose from: 1) low-impact Aqua Zumba dance exercises, or 2) strength, cardio, and plyometric HydroFit training (45 minutes to 1 hour)