Teaching your children to swim may only be something you give serious thought to if you have a swimming pool or live near the ocean. However, it’s essential to note that there is a wide range of benefits to teaching children to swim from a very young age.
Many parents who are familiar with the safety and health benefits of swimming choose to invest in services like the swimming lessons Frankston experts provide. If you think the only benefit involves safety, we urge you to keep reading.
Why All Children Should Know How to Swim
Reports released in early 2023 have shown that drownings in Australia have reached an all-time high with the death rate being its highest in 25 years. While that is not necessarily a concept that you want to think about when you’re taking your children on holiday, it’s essential to use statistics to motivate you in making wise decisions.
If you have small children, keep reading as our experts share the top benefits that go along with teaching infants and children to swim at an early age.
1. Obviously, Water Safety
In addition to learning how to swim, children who attend professional swimming lessons will also be taught about the various aspects of water safety. Keep in mind that the right water safety skills will be valuable for the children’s entire lives—money well spent!
2. Assists with Cardiovascular Health
One of the best ways to give your children a strong cardiovascular foundation is to teach them to swim. This is because swimming conditions the heart and lungs to work together more efficiently. With this type of conditioning, your child’s heart won’t have to work as hard to pump the required oxygen and blood throughout their body.
3. Encourages Physical Exercise
Keeping children physically active can be challenging when all they want to do is spend time indoors with gadgets, TVs and game stations. Swimming provides a fun and exciting way to keep your children active. In addition to staying fit, your children will learn flexibility and endurance while improving overall fitness.
4. Increased Lung Capacity
Among the first skills that young swimmers are taught is how to control their breath while they’re in the water. These skills in turn assist with increasing lung capacity which then enables oxygen to pump more efficiently. This of course provides higher energy levels which can go a long way toward encouraging your kids to stay active.
5. Increases Energy
Smaller children seem to have an endless supply of energy. That said, you might not want to encourage them to do anything that creates more energy! However, swimming not only provides energy through higher fitness levels, but creates an excellent outlet for it.
6. Enhanced Muscle Building
During swimming, children learn to use all their muscle groups. Some of these don’t really get much of a workout otherwise.
Kids learn to use different muscles together to glide, kick and pull their way through the water. They also learn which muscle groups to use to perform safety manoeuvers, if necessary. Furthermore, body balance classes also assist children in finding the perfect balance between their upper and lower bodies.
7. Creates Better Sleep Patterns
Depending on the age of your children, you might look forward to their nap times, so you can rest too! The good news is that the physical activity involved in swimming will encourage better sleeping patterns. This has a lot to do with using their muscles correctly, better circulation and oxygen flow.
8. Potential Stress
You don’t have to be working at a 9 to 5 job to experience some sort of stress. There can be many reasons why children develop stress or anxiety. The good news is that the common feeling of gliding and floating in the water has an excellent calming effect on most children.
9. Develops Motor Skills
Children under the age of five benefit from the balance and motor skills they learn during the swimming process. In addition to improving general motor skills, your children will also experience better hand-eye coordination as well as an increase in their concentration levels.
10. Builds and Improves Confidence Levels
Children often show some degree of nervousness when it comes to taking on new experiences. Encouraging children to take part in swimming lessons from an early age teaches them to embrace new practices.
This happens when they realise that every little kick and deep breath leads to them learning to swim. Meeting other children in the class also encourages more social interaction and they’ll have a bunch of fun doing it!
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there are multiple exciting benefits to signing your kids up for swimming lessons. Not only will your children have skills they can use throughout their lives, but they’ll create a healthy foundation that will go a long way toward encouraging them to become and staying fit. It will also give you peace of mind that they’ll be able to take care of themselves when they’re in the water!