Just in case, eh?
Well I thin you’re a bad parent if your child isn’t always wearing a life preserver. I mean at all times. It might have been embarrassing for my sixteen year old when she took that long bus trip, but HEY who knows when they might overturn on a bridge and plummet into the water! It’s that or the giant bubble.
I was taught to swim before my memory kicked in; IOW, in my baby book there is an “award” in my name b/c of my superior swimming ability.
I’ve always heard that babies are born knowing how to swim, and that the reason people drown is due to the fact that their psychological fear overcomes their innate ability to conquer water.
To this day I do not enjoy swimming; if you place me in a pool deeper than my height, or a large body of water, I can dog-paddle and I can float, but it’s not an activity I enjoy or seek out.
However, I will in all likelihood not drown. I know how to “survive” water.
One of my good girlfriends was on a boat with me a few weeks ago, and she was so frightened by the lake we were floating on that she didn’t want to stand up straight on the boat. She had never learned to swim.
That’s wrong. If she were ever to fall in, she would panic and probably drown.
I learned to swim at my local YMCA; if there is any way possible for a child to have access to water and lessons, they should learn to swim. It’s great exercise, it’s good practice, and you never know where you’ll end up.
We had a similar program for swimming and skating in western Michigan. Same age groups and everything!
I think it’s an important thing for kids to learn. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say it’s bad parenting not to. However, if you have the opportunity to let your kids learn to swim, you should provide it.
I don’t look on it so much as a survival skill as much as a skill they’ll enjoy (or at least take part in infrequently) for the rest of their lives. Pool parties and trips to the beach aren’t all that unusual. Heck, all through my 20’s we hung out with friends at their apartment complex pools for most of the summer. It’s nice to be able to participate in the swimming part of those activities.
I wouldn’t call it bad parenting, but maybe not optimal parenting.
My mother (we ahve figured out over many years) cannot swim. She denies this vehemently stiil, but we were all taught to swim at very early ages-on swim teams and did Jr life saving (which I falied to pass, btw).
I think it’s a sensible skill to have. I know that I do not want to send my kids out for a nice afternoon of fishing at a nearby lake, only to worry that they will drown.
Knowing how to swim doesn’t prevent drowning, but it lessens the likelihood a great deal.
I do have a problem-my youngest is adamant set against it. Since age 3 he has been in swim lessons. I am skipping this summer (for reasons to lengthy to go into here). He really doesn’t like it. But I will make him continue until he can stroke and float and tread water well.
Sometimes people can’t swim, and it’s got nothing to do with parenting. My parents sent me to Saturday classes at the Y for a year, and by the end I could paddle around a little. It would be too kind to call it swimming - more like “actively not-drowning”. My siblings who attended the same courses learned to swim properly.
And then what little I could do was ruined by an incident that has left me afraid of deep water, certainly unable to swim or even actively not-drown in it. My parents were not present, but other allegedly responsible adults were, and they let me down. Don’t want to go into details, let’s just say my parents saw to it that I never saw those adults again. But it was too late.
My older son can swim well and loves going off the 3-meter board. My younger son is working on learning. But I can’t, I may never be able to, and my parents should not be made to take the blame for that.
One would think that being surrounding by the Great Lakes and the hundreds of little lakes adn the plethora of swimming pools here in Michigan, that swimming would be second nature to the inhabitants of our state.
Yet, I am constantly surprised how many adults who cannot swim or barely dogpaddle. It is sad really, in my mind.
I cannot remember a time in my life when being in the water and not swimming.
My kids have been in swim classes since infants and adore the water.
Interesting. That’s like not wanting to use a parachute on one’s first skydive, because there’s a chance it won’t open.
‘To Drown’ means ‘To die by suffocating in water or another liquid.’
I am a good dogpaddler and can definitely keep myself afloat, but I loathe swimming.
I get nauseated and ear infections and just generally grumpy when I’m forced to swim.
Bad parenting? I say nonsense, especially where I live. Here, you have to go out of your way to encounter a body of water larger than your bathtub, and swimming isn’t going to help you in the tub.
I wouldn’t call it bad parenting either. My parents didn’t have the time or money to teach me how to swim, even though I eventually learned (fairly badly). I can’t tread water for shit, nor can I swim a couple laps without expending all my energy (this was back when I used to run 8-10 miles a day). Still managed to somehow get an ‘A’ in swim class in high school. Guess that “survival float” pulled me through.
For me, there just wasn’t any opportunity to really learn how to swim, at least not an early age. We didn’t have a pool. Our neighbors didn’t have a pool. My mother and father were always working and had better things to spend their money on than swimming lessons. I mean, really, in my parenting priority list, swimming classes are pretty far down there.
I really do wish I could swim well. I have this recurring dream in which I just swim, swim, swim and am so relaxed and so at peace with the world, almost like being back in the womb. Unfortunately, in real life, for me, swimming is anything but relaxing and peaceful. But my dream makes it seem so nice.
Where I grew up, no school had a swimming pool. We had no YMCA.
There were pools, open only in summer. The only indoor pool I knew of (outside of two hotels in town) was at the local state college. It was not open to the public. Sure, many kids in my town learned to swim, but lessons were only offered in the summer, by the Red Cross. I am not sure how easy it is for families with two working parents, or with limited financial means, to take advantage of those lessons. I think the country club may have offered swim lessons in its outdoor pool, but for members only.
You have to be realistic, I think, about access to swimming instruction.
Before reading this thread, it would never have even crossed my mind that not teaching your child to swim was anywhere close to “bad parenting”. I can’t swim. Never learned. I’m certainly not crippled by it. I have very little desire to swim. I’m not yearning to jump into a pool. I just don’t generally get into the water, and never when it’s deeper than about my waist/chest.
It’s not something that I would consider to have “missed out on” or anything. If I ever end up falling into a large body of water, I’ll drown (to death). shrug That’s a risk I take, and frankly, one I’m very, very, very unlikely to face, given that I really don’t have a whole lot of desire to go traipsing around any large bodies of water. (Really…I don’t even go to the beach)
Not being able to swim is due to bad parenting? Personally I think thats a bit much. I can hardly blame my parents for not being able to swim. When I was younger, sometime between the age of 7-12. I had three sets of lessons in school. I still cant swim, how is that my parents fault?
Maybe if you live on the ocean, or near a lake, then yes your kids probably should learn to swim, but otherwise, I dont really see the need for it.
That being said, if I ever have kids I will send them for lessons, its nice to be able to swim in pools on holidays and to keep fit etc.
Every year it seems one hears of some group of inner-city kids that gets taken on a trip to Florida or something and somebody drowns in a hotel pool. Or possibly the ocean. At any rate, water is everywhere some places and if you fall in and can’t swim you can die. And it happens more than you think. I think it’s important to teach your kids to swim if it’s at all possible.
Depends on where you live. Sure, if you live near a river or lake, or in an area where people commonly have deep in-ground pools it might be a necessary survival skill. I live in NYC miles away from water . I’ve never seen anyone here with a pool deeper than four feet (above ground). If I go the the beach, there are lifeguards there. People do occasionally drown at the beach, but it generally involves drinking, an undertow, and/or going into the ocean when lifeguards are off duty. I can’t think of a situation in which I could accidently fall into the water and knowing how to swim would make a difference.
I would consider it a given. I learned too late that my average parents were anything but. I was forced to take swimming lessons until proficient before I was allowed near water. I was forced to eat right, get enough sleep, and exercise. I was taught right from wrong, respect for my fellow human being and a general concern for the world around me. I went to church and a parochial school (at their expense). My posture, manners, and speech were corrected on a daily basis. I learned how to cook, balance a checkbook, do basic plumbing, and how to repair just about anything with a manual. They encouraged me in sports and outside activities to the point where my Father learned how to couch soccer so we could put together a team (which won the tournament championship).
I felt like I’d accomplished something when I got my college degree. Surely I must be smarter than my parents who only went to HS. I’ve stopped calling myself Shirley.
Johnny has the bare bones of it. In my dad’s case, he dove into a neighbor’s pool, conked his head and passed out. His lungs filled with water, how much we don’t know, and so he was considered drowned. Luckily for dear old dad, he was found, they pounded the heck out him (pre-CPR days though), the water found it’s way out, he had a pulse and started breathing again. The family theory is that the pounding on his back and chest might have acted like accidental CPR. It was considered a miracle until CPR became popularily known and gave us a theory.
Given that no one knew my dad had sneaked into the neighbor’s yard, and nobody had any real knowledge of CPR, it’s amazing he survived and without any permanent damage, to boot. Heck, given the scarcity of swimming pools in Oklahoma City during the 40’s, it’s amazing he’d have been in a situation to drown in the first place.
My dad took the Jewish (requirement? strong-recommendation-by-the-Sages? I’m not entirely sure which) that a father has to teach his children to swim pretty seriously. He made sure all of us could at least float and do a backstroke from the time we were small, although it took me until a while after that (in daycamp) to really learn the crawl well.
I think it’s bad parenting to allow your children anywhere near a body of water if you haven’t taught them how to swim and aren’t going to be watching them every second.
I had to teach a good friend to float and do a backstroke so that she could graduate from Columbia, which still has a swim test requirement for graduation. She was 22, married, and about to graduate summa cum laude with a double major in psych and English, but she seemed almost ready to let this stop her from getting her degree because she was so afraid of it. She’d gone so long being totally unable to swim that she’d built up a complex that she just couldn’t do it, although she wasn’t afraid of the water exactly. It’d have been better if her parents had just introduced it to her early enough.
I don’t consider it “bad” parenting, but it is a skill people should learn.
My dad taught me to swim, I also had formal lessons, and in primary school they took us to a pool every week for lessons.
For those saying that not everyone has access to a pool, I would like to point out that my dad learned to swim without even going in the water. My Grandad laid him across a stool and taught him the right movements. When he did go in the water, he was fine.
Every year we take 20-30 kids to Boy Scout summer camp, and the two or three who don’t know how to swim seem to come from “disadvantaged” families. Our observation is the parent (usually a single mom) never got around to arranging swimming lessons for their kids, which is understandable since they’re usually held in the summer during the day, for ages six through ten or so. If the kid’s at a summer-care program that doesn’t take them to lessons, they don’t get the chance to learn, which is often the case for a cheaper in-home daycare.
By the time summer camp is over, the Scouts will have at least had some basic lessons and be a “beginner” swimmer, and by the second summer, they almost always pass the swimming tests. We encourage their parents to get them into swimming lessons in the meantime. When they get to 7th or 8th grade, they’ll have swimming in the (public) schools, and a swim test is part of the graduation standards in Minnesota.
Is it? I graduated a long time ago and we had swimming in PhyEd, but if you didn’t pass your swim test, you passed PhyEd with a C for trying. No one made you swim laps to graduate.
My parents live on a lake, thus it would be irresponsible parenting if I didn’t teach my kids to swim. Which they have been learning for years. My almost seven year old son isn’t bad, my six year old daughter can dogpaddle well enough that if she falls off the dock she won’t drown (unless she hits her head). We still watch them or have them wear lifejackets in the water.
But for people who don’t have their kids near water, its no more irresponsible than me not teaching my kids how to downhill ski.