As family schedules change throughout the year, sometimes it becomes more difficult to find time for swim lessons. Often parents are curious if taking a short break from lessons could have a negative impact on their child’s progression.
The truth is: it can. Consistency is very important for young swimmers to acquire and retain skills. It’s recommended that swim lessons continue year-round to prevent slipping backwards down the learning curve your child worked so hard to overcome. Children can become rusty when they’re unable to practice several times a week, which could result in:
- Loss of skill: Placing swim lessons on pause for even a short period of time can cause children to undo all the progress they’ve worked diligently to achieve. Often times when children re-join swim lessons, skills that were previously mastered need to be re-taught. For each month your child is not in the pool, it takes roughly 1-2 days to return to their previous skill level. For example if you take a break for 1 semester (average 3 months), it will take about 3-6 classes to return to the skill level they were at when they left off.
- Loss of confidence: Even children who are confident and comfortable in the water run the risk of losing their confidence during a break. Children have more difficulty in retaining knowledge if they have low confidence in the activity. Those who are not confident in the water may panic in an emergency situation.
- Loss of dedication: Dedication is an important value to instill in children, especially at a young age. To cultivate a healthy lifestyle, parents should encourage dedication (amongst other traits) throughout the developmental process of the child. Quieting swim lessons may lead to developing a lack of dedication, which may transfer to other areas of life as well.
Experts recommend that kids do not take a break from swim lessons, as it will cause confidence and skills to be lost. Thus, they will have to be re-taught once swim lessons resume. Swimtastic understands the importance of continuing swim lessons and offers a preferred client program to make continuous lessons affordable for everyone. Members of our Preferred Client Program receive unbeatable benefits:
- Save 10%
- No registration fees while in the program
- Monthly payments
- Priority registration and class times
- Unlimited Family Swim
- Fixed rate
- Plus location-specific benefits
For more information about our preferred client program call 888-549-SWIM (7946).
Swimtastic Corporation
888-549-SWIM (7946)
