Do you approve of teaching a child to swim by throwing him/her into a pool?

In My Humble Opinion
41

My daughter (age 2) is like a fish, loves the water, doesn’t mind being dunked in the bathtub, and will happily and readily stick her head underwater to blow bubbles. She might be okay if someone tried to teach her to swim via this method. (Although said person would decidedly NOT be okay once he/she was within arm’s reach of yours truly, but moving along…)

Whatsit Jr. (age 4) is a little more nervous about the water. He likes playing it but flatly refuses - even through a week of swim lessons this month - to put his head under. He doesn’t like being splashed too much and is iffy about going down the kiddy waterslide, because you tend to get dunked at the end of it. If he were thrown into a pool as described in the article, I suspect he would be scared half to death, traumatized, and refuse to go in the pool ever again.

I have two points to make here. First, to all of the people attesting that they, or someone they know, learned to swim this way and didn’t mind it, were not scared, and are great swimmers today: Sure, okay. Some kids probably just have the personality to handle something like this reasonably well. But you know, some kids don’t. And you really don’t know for sure which is which until you try it.

Second, no way in hell would I ever do this to my own kids. I want them to trust that I am looking out for their safety, not to suspect that at any moment I might throw them into a dangerous situation and then refuse to help them. I also suspect that I am simply not capable of standing by while my screaming child is flailing in the water and calling for help. I believe I would give anyone in my way a good elbow to the gut while racing madly to the water.

So, to sum up: No, I don’t approve.

42

My father was of the “throw 'em in the deep end” school of thought and I was terrified of water higher than chest high for years. I finally learnt to swim at age 40. It’s not a method I used with my own children.

43

My kids took swimming lessons from the YMCA for three years. Cost me a good deal better than $200 and they ended up being marginal swimmers at best. Upon retrospect, it would have been far more cost efficient, and much quicker, to toss them in the deep end.

I have two minds about this. One is that, with a certain type of kid, it would make them hate the water altogether. On the other hand, drowning is a real danger (my cousin’s 3 year old died by drowning in a few feet of water) and every kid should be taught how to swim as soon as possible.

So, no, I don’t approve of the method necessarily, but I am not going to throw stones at the parents either, because I think that ultimately they are doing the responsible thing.

44

Tell me about it. Don’t the kids have older siblings nowadays? That’s their job! :wink:

45

It’s funny that you say this, because my older sister did this to me when I was a kid and even to this day, I’m still mad about it.

She was a lifeguard at a city pool and was training some newbie lifeguards on rescue techniques. I was sort of looking on down at the shallow end, sitting with my feet in the water, not bothering anyone. Swimming-wise, the most I could do was dog paddle clumsily for a few seconds. But I was in no real rush to learn anything more than that.

Big Sister suddenly got the bright idea to use me in a demonstration on how to recognize a drowning person. Of course, this idea wasn’t shared with me until after it was carried out. She swam over and carried me over to the deep end (I was eight, I think, and I remember thinking how cool it was that my big sister wanted me to come over and meet her friends). And then abruptly, she let go of me.

It was one of the worst minutes of my life.

I really don’t know how she could have stood there, smugly watching me struggle and flail and cry out frantically for help as water threatened to rush into my gaping, terrified mouth, but she managed quite well. Panic made my legs and arms move in stupid, uncoordinated movements, so if this experiment was supposed to have transformed me into some graceful penguin of a swimmer, it failed in a spectacular way. The magical thing called instinct never kicked in.

The worst thing about it all, amazingly enough, wasn’t the fact that I was sure I was drowning. It was feeling humiliated as I was drowning. I could feel everyone’s eyes watching me as I struggled. Here I was, a kid, surrounded by teenagers who knew how to swim like fish, who could have easily reached out and saved me if they wanted to. They were just out of arm’s reach. But they just stood there, watching me almost die. Never have I felt as helpless and taken advantaged of.

Big Sister was gracious enough to save me right before I got too tired to flail anymore. I was too upset and angry to be relieved. She thought the whole thing was hilarious, of course.

But it wasn’t. It was cruel. That’s the only way I can describe this kind of thing. To be a good swimmer, a person needs to be confident in the water. Throwing a person who can’t swim in a pool is the worse way to instill confidence in them. It is an excellent way to make them hate the water so much that they won’t get anywhere near it. So perhaps it does have some anti-drowning benefits.

46

Overall, the “toss 'em in, and let God sort the swimmers out” is a stupid idea.

But this bit? isn’t so much as dumb.

I used to teach lessons at the YMCA, and taught Lifesaving classes, as well. At a certain point, when you’ve got the kids into the water, and willing to thrash away from the wall for a bit, you’ve got to stand back. If you’re there to grab onto, then they’ll grab on to you.

So you want to be close enough to step in if they actually start to flounder, but far enough away so they won’t give up and stop swimming because there’s a tall object to hang onto. I used to use me as “bait” – they’d start swimming toward me, and then I’d slowly back up until I thought they’d gone as far as they could (or would).

47

Of course it does, because as well as removing the emotive language, you’ve described two quite different situations. Choice of words as in ‘apple’ or ‘orange’.

48

Y’know, I think I’m probably the only person who did this to herself! I was about six or so and I remember thinking that I wasn’t really learning how to swim because I kept putting my feet down–so I climbed out to the back of the boat where it was pulled up to shore and jumped off the back into water over my head. Did I mention that I decided to do this when the rest of the family was up at the campsite eating lunch, out of sight? I did actually learn to swim really fast, got a ton of water up my nose and scared the crap outta my parents when I told them what I’d done, and remain an avid swimmer to this day…

That being said, if someone tried this stunt with one of my kids or a grandkid, they’d better pray there are no sharks in the pool, I’m just sayin’… Hey, just because I’m a naturally stupid yet otterlike person doesn’t mean it’s gonna breed true, and it’s nasty to make a kid scared of water–or anything else for that matter.

49

you with the face, was this monstro, or another sister?

Damn, if I had been in charge of that pool, I’d have fired your sister. No offense, but that’s not a good idea.

50

You’re not! I was quite familiar with the water, because we would go into the ocean but always with water wings. So when I took lessons at the pool (which of course seemed quite tame compared to the Pacific) I had one lesson then figured that was it, I knew how to swim, I knew everything about it–and I jumped into the deep end because the shallow end was for babies. (I was four or five at the time.) I did this with such confidence that nobody came to save me, and when I got chewed out for this (which I did) I pointed out that I’d managed to swim over to the side of the pool, hadn’t I, so obviously I did know everything about it.

Compare this with ten years or so later when I was taking the lifesaving course and was convinced that someone would have to actually rescue me, for real, every single class. Because by then I knew for absolute fact that I did not know it all. (I did know not to breathe when there was a wave slapping me in the face, but knowing it and being able to do it were very different.)

51

(double post, sorry, no edit, hit submit instead of preview)

But to answer the OP’s question, no, I would never throw a child into the water to teach them how to swim. I did do a baby class with my kids when they were 3 or so months old. Dunked them in the water, in fact, but first we blew into their faces so they closed their eyes & held their breath. Got them used to that, so they knew what was happening. They do, in fact, swim–but I was never even an arm’s length away and at the first sign of panic or tears they were in my arms. Although I only remember panic/tears in one case, come to think of it.

52

Goddamn. What I want to know is if you ever paid her back. 'Cause i would’ve, ten-fold.

53

For the most part it depends on the child. If they are prone to be scared of everything and already have a fear of water no, not a good idea, but otherwise it works, I think.

Throwing them in (and someone being there in case the kid freaks) is a great way to teach kids. It was how I was taught, granted I am a bad swimmer now because I am out of practice due to lack of places to swim. I never stopped trusting my mom because of it. My father is terrified of water, he almost drowned in the military once and still won’t swim, he and mom both wanted me to learn that water won’t kill you unless you let it.
I am terrified of deep water, but only because I fear the things in the water. I would swim in a 10 foot deep pool, but can’t get in a 3 foot deep creek. The fish, snakes, crawdads, snails and other icky things might touch me. I wish mom had thrown me in a lake instead of a pool and cured two future fears in one toss.

54

No, this was my older sister, eight years my senior. monstro is my twin and just as clumsy as I was in the water. Bless are poor, 'flicted hearts.

And Lorie Smurf, I never paid my sister back. Maybe when we’re both old, half senile, and in a nursing home, I’ll do something really mean and random to her, like pour a pot of hot grits down her granny pants. And she’ll be like “Whacha do that for?” And I’ll be like “This is for that day at the pool, you damn bitch!” And then I’ll give her wedgie for good measure.

I can hear myself cackling now. Ah, me.

55

That’s what my sister did to me, too. It was quite effective as well. Not a year later, I was winning blue ribbons in the local swim meets. :cool: