Water Confidence
Confidence around and in water doesn’t have to be practiced in a swimming pool, bath time is a fantastic time to work on water confidence.
The main fear that children have putting their face in the water comes from the fact they don’t know how to blow bubbles, they may have tried it before and got water up their nose which is very unpleasant!
Tip 1:
Baby steps is the key, try a simple game of Simon says.
Simon says…
- Put your chin on the water
- Put your chin in the water
- Put your right cheek in the water
- Put your left cheek in the water
- Put your right ear in the water
- Put your left ear in the water
- Put both ears in the water
Tip 2:
Practice blowing bubbles out of their mouths.
Blowing out underwater is a key skill for swimming. The technical word for it is ‘aquatic breathing’. We don’t want to encourage children to hold their breath under the water but instead to breathe out. This is really important when we start to teach things like front crawl for the timing of the strokes and if it’s something they can master now it makes things much easier later down the line.
Ask your child to imagine they have a big birthday cake in front of them and they have to blow all the candles out on their cake. They can start by doing this on top of the water and when they are comfortable practice doing it in the water.
Just remind them to keep blowing out until their mouth is back out of the water.
Tip 3:
Practice blowing bubbles out of their noses.
Once children have mastered blowing bubbles out of their mouths you can move on to practicing blowing bubbles out of their noses.
This is quite a tricky skill! Over the years, the easiest way I have found of teaching this is to get children to practice humming. First above the water so they get the idea and then for a couple of seconds in the water with their nose underneath.
You can’t hum without breathing out of your nose!
Once children have got the idea of how to breath out of their noses bubbles become much easier.
Once they have mastered doing this for a couple of seconds they can try for longer periods of time.
Tip 4:
Practice putting their whole face in the water
If your child really doesn’t like getting water in their eyes well fitting goggles can really help with this. We recommend the Aquasphere goggles.
Now that your child can blow bubbles out of their mouth and their nose they can practice putting their whole face in. This is the easy bit really as it’s just their eyes left!
Tell them to blow bubbles out of their mouth or nose (if they are blowing out the water can’t go in) and slowly put their face in the water for a few seconds. Once they have mastered doing this for a few seconds they can try for longer periods of time.
Tip 5:
Practice looking for things under the water
Whether this is bath toys, counting how many fingers you are holding up under the water or an underwater sinker. Remind them to blow bubbles all the time when their faces are in the water.
All the above tips are progressive practices for teaching children to put their faces in the water. It’s important not to move on until the first one has been mastered. If your child can’t blow bubbles there’s no point in trying to convince them to put their face in the water and risk them getting a mouth/ nose full of water and putting them off.
Baby steps practiced over time will lead to the best results.
Being able to put your face in the water is a key skill for swimming and can really improve a child’s enjoyment of their lesson if they are not worried about getting water in their face. It can also really help confidence when jumping in and with swimming independently.
I hope you have found the above helpful, if you need any advice please feel free to have a chat with us, we are always happy to help whether you’re already enrolled with lessons with us or not.