In the early stages of learning, developing ‘water confidence’ is important and time spent feeling happy in the water will be of more benefit than learning strokes. Talk to your child’s teacher if you have any concerns about your child’s progress.
What Can I do to help?
A bit like learning to drive, it will take a long time to improve with just one session a week.
Happy swim times with the family; building confidence and practicing things that have been introduced by the teacher will greatly help. Better still ask your learner's teacher what you could work on.
If you can’t visit the pool between teaching sessions, there are things you can do at home. For example, ‘pointing’ and ‘unpointing’ toes, or washing your learner's hair with their head forward rather than backwards to get used to water running across the face.
A few minutes each day will make a real difference, remember back to when you learnt a new activity!