Swimming With The School

I love the idea of school swimming lessons.  It’s got to be a good thing right?  Sadly, it hasn’t been for us and it’s been really frustrating.

J has been going swimming since babyhood.  He’s had regular lessons all that time with the same swim school.  He’s also swam with us as a family especially when we are on holiday.  During the school holidays, we try to go once a week too, especially during the longer breaks.  So my son loves swimming.  He’s never going to be an Olympic swimmer, but he should turn out to be very competent. I plan to send him to lessons for a good few years yet.

He’s been swimming independently (no floatation devices) for over a year.  He’s got various badges including his 20 metre distance badge.  He’s learning his strokes and is already quite good at breaststroke.  His front crawl needs a bit of work still, but it does the job of getting him around the pool.

So J went swimming with the school.  They all wore armbands the first week while they saw how good they were.  Fine.  They then let them take the armbands off and J lost his.  Fine.  Then they did a bit of a test and J got knocked off his stride by another child swimming across him.  Fine, that happens in the pool.  What doesn’t have to happen though is that a child who was fine without armbands, suddenly gets put back in them.  Imagine what that does to self-esteem.

Now J is reluctant to go swimming and had to be persuaded to go to his regular out of school class.  That went well because they know him and he enjoys it.  I had a word with his teacher about the swimming with the school and the armband thing.  I left it with her and he wore armbands again.  Sighs!  Clearly, she didn’t listen to a word I said.  Not a very happy bunny as you can imagine.