What is the earliest age that a baby can learn how to swim? My family has been testing this
with my nephew. He was only 6 months old when we enrolled him in classes with a group called
Infant Swimming Resource. Now, of course he's not "swimming."
babies this young aren’t developmentally ready to move themselves forward through the water.
Instead the goal was to teach him to survive.
I have to say I was a bit skeptical when I first saw these clips. How could
a baby who can’t even walk or talk learn how to float. I mean, it kind of looks like torture.
But before a month had passed, my nephew proved me wrong.
Every day 2 American families lose a child to drowning. Drowning deaths are declining
overall but it is still the #1 killer of kids ages 1-4, aside from birth defects.
And Arizona, where my nephew lives, has a higher drowning rate than average, which isn't surprising
given that in the Phoenix area, 43% of homes have a swimming pool.
These classes they put my nephew in should really be the 3rd line of defense. The first is a fence
wraps around the pool latches shut, second is constant supervision.
But if those safeguards fail and a baby slips into the water, it sounds kind of farfetched but the
question is what skills, if any, can the baby use to keep itself alive? That’s where
ISR comes in “It’s completely different than other
programs that are out there.” This is Jennifer, one of my nephew’s instructors.
“There’s not a lot of singing and games even though there’s a ton of positive reinforcement.”
She told me that unlike other programs where kids might play in the pool or use floaties, ISR
classes are geared entirely toward preparing a baby for an emergency situation.
The instructor is shaping his behavior through basic operant conditioning. When he positions
his body correctly in a float that behavior is reinforced with a good breath of air and
with her picking him up.
They did this every day for a few weeks and by the end my nephew could put himself into
a float after being tipped in face-down. They also tested him with clothes on because
in most drowning situations, the child is clothed.
Now that he’s 1 year old and he's walking, he’s enrolled in the second set of lessons, which
teaches him to look for the stairs and swim toward them under water, taking breaks to float when he needs
air on the way. So is all of this good for him?
Some people worry that this type of lesson is traumatizing. My nephew certainly doesn't like
the lessons, and doesn't really like Jennifer. “If they're not happy with me, I’m the teacher, I’m the bad guy.
But just as long as they’re successful in all the skills that are being taught.”
He never developed a fear of the pool. And his tears don’t seem that different from the
ones that come when he doesn’t want to take a nap.
They also keep the lessons to just 10 minutes a day to reduce any health risks of being
in the pool. The American Academy of Pediatrics says swimming
lessons for kids 1 year and up can be effective in preventing drownings, but they
don’t support programs for babies younger than that.
“The water-survival skills programs for infants may make compelling videos for the
Internet, but no scientific study has yet demonstrated these classes are effective.”
What they’re really worried about is that these classes could give parents a false sense
of security - if they made parents even a little less vigilant, they would do more
harm than good. So the doctors are waiting for more data.
But for my family, there’s kind of only one data point that we really care about right now.
The #1 goal is to make sure he'll really be tested. But if my nephew does find himself
suddenly under water, it won’t be the first time that he’s had to find his way back up.