The first thing you think of when you think swimming lessons is that is it an important life skill for a child to learn – and they can have lots of fun doing it. After all, it’s rare to find someone – especially a child – who doesn’t love to swim and be in the pool!
There are some less obvious benefits to children (outside of the fun they have) that we’ve covered in another post. This post is about the somewhat subliminal benefits of a child’s swim lessons to Mom and Dad.
While many look at it as just a weekly slot of idle time they have to spend in at their child’s swim school waiting for while they have their lessons. We challenge you to look at it a different way.
Meeting new friends. I don’t think you should be Chatty Kathy but getting to know the other parents who wait through lessons is lesson benefit. You already have at least two things in common with the people there: you have children and you want them to know how to swim. With those as common points, it’s quite easy to have comfortable conversations and develop new friends beside the pool as your children develop new friendships in the pool. Many parents will head off to play dates after lessons with their new friends from swim class.
Learning as you watch. Depending on your own childhood experience in learning to swim, you may learn a few swim tips for yourself as you observe your child’s lessons.
Being engaged with your child. By watching your child’s progress during lessons, you can be engaged in the learning process. You can reinforce activities and concepts at home and give the child encouragement as he or she looks forward to the next week to improve on their new skills.
Joy of seeing your child achieve skills. Learning to swim gives your child the opportunity to experience several new feelings – from doing an activity in water to learning skills and getting better at them. There is nothing quite like seeing the sheer excitement of such experiences on the little face of your child. They are getting one of their first tastes of what it feels like to achieve something on their own.
Just relaxing. You’re not going anywhere for awhile. Take advantage of it to just enjoy observing your child. Other adults are taking care of your child so you can just be an observer. It’s a rare moment in time when you’re not going to be asked a question or asked to do something (unless you have other children in tow). Don’t waste the moment burying yourself in your email or rushing to scroll through your Facebook alerts or Twitter feed. Just take a deep breath, be still and relax.
You may actually begin to value “your” lesson time and look forward to your child’s lessons each week.
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