I knew how to ‘doggy paddle’ by instinct as far as I can remember. I think my sister taught me the breaststroke when I was a kid and we used to go to the pool in the summer almost every day. In second grade, our class was bussed to the YMCA 2 or 3 days a week for several weeks for lessons. I think there were different levels, guppies, sharks, etc. I can’t remember what I was, just them teaching us the backstroke, breaststroke, how to float, etc.
In high school, it was a requirement to know at least 5 strokes and be able to dive properly. For those who couldn’t pass the test, we took a semester of PE devoted to swimming. You weren’t allowed to graduate until you could prove you could swim 5 different strokes and dive. I’ve never seen or heard of this requirement anywhere else.
I always just knew. Or I don’t remember when I learned. I do remember how I learned how to tread water, though. I was 6 and was playing around in the water on Brighton Beach when one of those notorious ‘holes’ was suddenly under me. I was already in armpit deep.
I was too startled to think SWIM, STUPID and I floundered. And then-- I wasn’t floundering at all, I was staying in place with my head above the water.
I remember trying to learn how to tread water and failing, but then while goofing around in a pool, my sister who was on dry land asked me a question (probably about food) and I stopped what I was doing to have a short conversation — and lo’ I’d been treading water the whole conversation!
Of course as soon as I realized, “Hey, I’m treading water!” I f*cked it up and sank like usual. I’m still learning the egg-beater way of treading water. I wanted to play water-polo but you have to pass a test that includes teh egg-beater style in order to be let on the team.
My parents grew up in Hawaii, dad was a surfer and mom a lifeguard for years, so they had us in the water young and we had lessons starting at age 5 or so. I can’t remember ever not being able to paddle around myself but when I was little I wore floaties unless I was supervised.
Despite all this effort my next youngest sister nearly drowned when she was two. Saved in the nick of time. My sister was very fearful of being underwater until she was a teenager.
Someone several blocks away from my house had a really neat pool, and they had swimming classes. The pool was painted black, and had stonework around it so that it looked like a pond. I learned to swim there when I was five. After that I spent a lot of time in the pool at NAS Miramar (with a hot dog and Cragmont cream soda for lunch) and in the ocean at Pacific Beach, and occasionally I was allowed to swim in the next door neighbour’s pool.
Oddly enough, though my parents signed me up for YMCA camp every year, when it came to the swim lessons, I would fake an illness, injury, and just about do anything I could to avoid getting in the pool. I could dog paddle, but did so very reluctantly. Thankfully, my grandparents had a pool, and I taught myself how to swim at a much older age around 10 or so because for some reason, I didn’t like the group approach to learning. Now it seems like I’ve been doing it forever, and I’m a fairly avid scuba diver as well.
I went to lessons at a public pool as a pre-schooler. It wasn’t until adulthood that a friend taught me how to dive an an adult improver’s course taught me breast-stroke.
My daughter’s had lessons at a public pools since she was 4 weeks old; she’s 12 now and still has lessons, with only a few breaks - the next ones’ll be lifesaving. She also goes swimming a lot with her best friend and we go swimming together frequently. We have a lido (big outdoor pool, heated) nearby as well as ordinary pools and one that has tunnels and wave machines, all free for kids.
Pre-school swimming classes run by the local council at a public pool, so age 4, perhaps age 3. The chlorine smell is one of my earliest memories, anyway. Swimming was a compulsory part of PE lessons all through school.
My mom was raised on the Maine coast, and she and her friends used to go diving off rocks into the water all the time. Until one of them never came up again.
Flash forward to 20 years later, when my mom won’t go into water deeper than a bathtub, and 4 kids are all having swimming lessons every single summer whether we knew how to swim or not.
I only learned how to swim the crawl because they wouldn’t let me go on the diving boards unless I could swim across the pool and back…and holding my breath underwater didn’t count. I was the champeeeeeen scarer of lifeguards at the pool after that, as I’d dive and then swim <underwater> to the other end of the pool before coming up.
My dad taught me when I was really young. We had a pool in our backyard, which I hardly ever left in the summer. I’ve never had any formal lessons. I can swim well, strongly, and for a really long time without getting tired, but it doesn’t look professional or anything.
I’d like to take lessons now to learn how to swim actual strokes.
I don’t remember, I’ll have to ask my parents. I’m guessing they were putting me in pools before I could even walk. I don’t remember ever not being able to swim.
Mostly lessons. I’m told I was a fish when small but something happened to freak me out and I was extremely scared until I was 7 or so, then I was put in swimming lessons and learned again. I got up to Maroon or Grey, then they changed it to numbers so I did level 11 and I stopped after that because I felt I knew enough and wasn’t interested in lifeguard classes. Not it’s something else yet again (my son is in lessons now, though he only became more comfy in the water this summer after spending a week running around beaches with the cousins. He had his own incident in Florida and nearly drowned.).
Our next door neighbors had a pool. They were also best friends with my parents, so we were there constantly during the summer. I don’t have any memories of being in the water and not already being able to swim. When I was 4, my mother enrolled me in formal swimming lessons at the local high school, but they said I was too young. I didn’t mind because I could already swim, and this way I got to spend time in the neighbors’ pool playing instead of at the school ‘learning’. We came back the next summer, and every summer after that for a number of years (the later classes were focused on learning new strokes, endurance, etc., rather than “learning to swim”).
The high school had community swimming lessons on Saturday mornings during the school year. I had swimming lessons there, and then 4 years of swimming during high school PE. Swimming 100 yards was a graduation requirement. Went to the local pool during summers as a kid and a week every year in a lake cottage in Wisconsin.
I was the champeeeeeen scarer of lifeguards at the pool after that, as I’d dive and then swim <underwater> to the other end of the pool before coming up.