Infant water survival focuses on active adult supervision and teaching babies self-rescue skills. Globally, the highest drowning rates are among children between the ages of 1-4 and closely followed by children aged between 5-9.
Most child drowning incidents in Australia occur in swimming pools, in your own backyard.
Prevention measures you can take to lower the chances of incidents to occur are actively supervising children of all ages around any and all bodies of water, restrict access to bodies of water to prevent unsupervised access, educate your children on water safety skills, and know how to respond in an emergency.
Infant water survival and learn to swim go hand in in hand, as learn to swim not only teaches your child the skills they require to swim, but also teaches them how to save themselves in different situations and the dangers that come with pools and different bodies of water.
Water familiarisation
Water Familiarisation is the first step in the learn to swim process. Making children feel relaxed and comfortable in the water is an essential skill before more structured teaching and learning takes place.
Teaching tips to support water familiarisation:
- Hold baby softly in the water so that they can feel the buoyancy of the water
- Wear a T-shirt or loose rashie in the pool so that little ones can grip and support their own body weight, rather than being picked up
- Establish routines for entering and exiting the water
- Develop confidence with games, positive praise, and enthusiasm
- Instruct children in water where they can stand
- Avoid over handling frightened beginners
- If you are assisting children make sure you have a soft (confident?) touch
- Build and maintain trust with all children
- Slowly introduce deep water activities like monkey pull along the pools edge and have the children explore buoyancy in the deeper water
- Encourage independence by allowing children to do things for themselves under adult supervision
Breath control
Learning breath control allows your child to submerge underwater happily without ingesting water.
Teaching tips to support breath control:
- Children can easily sniff water up their nose or drink the water if they don’t know how to hold their breath
- Ensure eyes and ears are submerged under the water to assist in body position
- Use adult demonstrations to help show the skill
- Using cue words like “ready, set go” or “1,2,3” every time
- Teach baby breath control through cup conditioning, use a verbal trigger “1,2,3” and gently pour a cup of water over their faces
- Practice breath control during every bath or shower
- Never force or hold a child’s head underwater
- Children must learn to hold their breath before bubbles can be taught
- Encourage children to put their face underwater by using, imaginative play, games, and positive praise
- Build breath control up to the count of 5 or 10
- Ensure children are comfortable submerging their face without using googles
Underwater Submersions
Once your child happily masters breath control it’s time for submersions
Teaching tips to support submersions:
- Avoid dunking baby underwater in a vertical position as this can push water up their nose
- Use the same verbal trigger “ready, set go” or “1,2,3” every time that you used in breath control
- If you are comfortable you may like to submerge with your baby
- Never force or hold children underwater
- First submersions must be performed voluntarily
- Initial submersions are being done holding onto the adults hands, pool edge, or kick board
- Use games like “ring a Rosie” to encourage submersions
- Teach children to return to a standing position
- Start in shallow water before transitioning to deeper waters
Floating
Floating is the basis of all learn to swim and will be a vital building block during all swimming lessons.
Teaching tips to floating:
- Everyone must learn to float independently without flotation devices to be a great swimmer
- We can float baby between adults, two to and from ledges and the pools edge
- These floating skills will develop alongside their growth and development on the land
- For example, if they are pulling themselves up on furniture, they can pull up on a shallow ledge if the water depth allows
- Children feel more comfortable floating to solid objects that won’t move
- Use a shallow water ledge during the initial back floats, this makes children feel secure
- Front floating with arms outstretched like superman will provide more balance
- Use a kickboard to assist early floating attempts both on front and back
- Gradually work towards a streamline position
- Slowly encourage children into deeper water
- Teach children to sit up from a back floating position, tell them to lift their head, look towards their toes this helps with sitting up
- Stiffness, cold or nervous shaking, and build of a person will affect floating
- Always provide support and encouragement
Propulsion
We can encourage propulsion and independent mobility in the water. Skills of kicking and paddling will continue to develop with age and coordination.
Teaching tips for propulsion:
- Shallow ledge kicking is ideal to encourage the correct kicking action because it restricts the depth of the kick
- Use gentle manipulation to show the child how to perform the kicking and paddling action
- Use simple instructions, repeated practice, and demonstrations of good technique with beginners
- For example, fast little kicks, long slow paddles
- Use short distance to develop great propulsion skills
- Backstroke kicking requires knees and feet underwater
Frequent exposure is the key to learn to swim and infant water survival. You may also like to talk to your child’s instructor and ask them for some tips to work on at home, even some simple activities to use in the bath.
If you have had a break from swimming, try not to get frustrated if your child is no longer in the same group with their friends who have continued swimming lessons in the winter months. They may have even slightly regressed and not be able to perform certain swimming skills to the same standard as they did before the break. Remember to go easy on your little swimmers.
Trust the advice of your child’s instructor and the team of swimming professionals working at a swim school you attend. Communicating with the swim school team will allow you to work together to get the most benefit out of swimming lessons for your child.
