Attached buoyancy aids
Development • What to do
When your child was learning to walk, they made an effort to stand up at everything. You held their little fingers, and they were so excited about your support and encouragement.
Attention and practice made it easier to get motivated to stand and take those firsts steps – and as a parent, it was an amazing experience seeing your child achieving a goal.
Have you ever heard of a parent, who trained with their child in standing up, supporting their first two-three-four steps and then pushing them, so they fell? No? Well, it wouldn’t make sense to help someone practice something, making them better and then destroying their training and progress.
Armbands and other buoyancy aids ruin children’s’ development.
In water, children are learning what the water can do to the body, and what the body can do to the water. The child is learning water agility. When we putt buoyancy aids on the child, they won’t learn about the horizontal body map or the carrying capacity in comparison to the bodies’ gravity and buoyancy.
To understand their bodies, it is important to experience its possibilities and limits. One factor is, the more the child is in the water, making experiences, being underwater, the easier it is to teach them to swim.
So what can you do?
Instead of using attached buoyancy aids, teaching the “wrong lesson”, you can do several things:
- Offer a noodle to the child. A noodle can be held in the hands, under the arms or even as a (sea)horse, if you are in a playful mood. This way, the experience, and learning, which the child will experience, will be, that some things float, and some things can even be used as a helping device if I can’t stay afloat myself. The child will learn how the water can carry and NOT carry the body, what he/she themselves should do to stay over or getting under the water. And most importantly concerning safety, they will learn, that the body does not just resurface if they don’t do anything. Remember, a noodle can easily be lost, so pay close attention to the child at all times.
- Go in the water with your child. This is the very best advice in teaching the child water confidence at a young age. If you are in the water, you can help and support when needed and pay attention and motivate when help is not needed. From the age of six months, the babies can start to learn, to hold on to you instead of being held. As the child gets older they will be able to use you as a “climbing tree” or a pause station, and they will be secure to let go of you, swim around themselves and return to you - all because they trust you and their own capabilities.
Remember: lifevests are still recommended for sailing and other situations, where it is a matter of safety. But the best safety advice will always be: learn to swim.