It is in our nature from the time we’re born to want to succeed. But that doesn’t mean that we naturally know how to deal with failure when we don’t.
From the time children stumble on their first steps, they have to deal with failure. They naturally get up and try again. We need to encourage that as they grow up and become self-conscious or afraid when they don’t succeed on their first attempts at other things.
Swimming is a great environment for this because children learn so many new skills. These skills are fun so they want to learn them and this makes overcoming a first try failure easier to accept.
Our competitive nature gives us the desire to jump right back in after a failed attempt at something – to give it another try at success. However, we are each competitive at different levels and may need encouragement to literally jump back in the water.
Providing recognition of what the child has done correctly and helping them see where they made the mistakes that caused them to fail, helps them to see that trying again can be a positive experience and is the way that they will improve. It can be as simple as asking “Do you know where you went wrong with that?” and “Do you know how to do that better?” Failing and trying again is “learning” – and we do that throughout our entire lives.
In the pool, everyone can learn. Everyone can become a swimmer and everyone can feel success. Everyone likes to succeed. This seemingly insignificant experience in the pool can be a big step in learning how to handle failure in other areas of life.
Little Otter Swim Schools’ expertise and passion for teaching swimming to children makes the two locations of the schools the perfect places for children to learn to swim. www.littleotterswim.com
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