Swimming and a 1 year old

[Jiinx]

Hi all,
 Z loves the water..we've been taking her pretty regularly every week since she's been 6  months. She has a floatie where her feet go into and she can kick the water. It's like a little shelter floatie with a place that her hands can hold in the front.

What's the next stage? How do we encourage her swimming to go further?

She doesn't take swimming lessons. She just goes swimming with me or her father as we have a pool downstairs.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[JayLeigh]

DS is 16 months, and we will be starting a mommy/me swimming class next month which I am really looking forward to, there are no floaties allowed . You should really check out the Water Babies way of teaching swimming from infancy. I believe they have DVDs you can order.

Since DS was a baby we have put him underwater. Now that he is older/aware we can't do it as easily anymore, so we are teaching him to blow bubbles, an essential step. We can now submerge his mouth for a moment, and he does not suck in water. But he does loooooooove, the water.

[okinawamama]

From what I've found in my fairly small town, all of the mommy and me swim classes are to get children familiar with the water. They play a lot of games, sing songs, play with floaties, and maybe put their face in the water but as far as teaching them the actual act of swimming, they don't do it.

I too have a son who loves the water (thanks to having a pool in our apartment complex and living across the street from the beach). The swimming lessons that actually teach them how to swim are mainly for life saving purposes and are insanely expensive and fairly intensive from what I've found (and I looked and looked). If we had a pool I'd absolutely invest, but since we only go as an entire family I didn't invest. Maybe near you thought they have an inbetween class! I sure wish they did for me

[skatty]

Leorah has been "swimming" since 7 months with DH. They didn't do anything special just lots of jumping above and under the water and swimming with one of those float belts and arm bands. I think at this age it is just keeping the love of the water and confidence up, before L was 2 she was going down the slide, jumping in the pool and jumping off the lowest diving board!! She is still crazy about the water and swims really well with arm bands and I reckon she'll be swimming without within the next year. I think it is such a good thing to be confident with the water, I am not at all so I love it when she frolicking in the sea telling me she is a mermaid 

BTW lucky you with the pool downstairs 

[Jiinx]

lol that's funny. Mermaid. She's got an imagination.

Thank you ladies for the responses. Good to know there's no "rule" or a wrong way of getting them to swim!

I will look into classes. I'm so curious as to what they can do with babies...