When parents are looking to get their children into swimming lessons, they are preoccupied with preventing drowning, and water safety in general. Although these are great things to be focused on, you will be surprised to hear how much swimming lessons can improve your child’s overall development at a young age.
Developmental Milestones
Griffith University researchers looked heavily into the impacts that swim lessons can have on baby growth physically, psychologically and cognitively. They surveyed 7,000 parents and closely observed 176 children (birth to five years of age) for three years, who were regularly attending swim classes. One of the most noteworthy results of this study was that children in swim lessons from an early age are, on average, seven months ahead on motor skill developmental milestones than the normal population. In turn, children are more advanced when it comes to balance, coordination, using utensils, drawing, and building with blocks.
Cognitive Development
The same Griffith University study revealed that cognition is also significantly improved in young children who are active in swim classes. In fact, the study determined that swimming helps the cognitive aspect of child development, advancing it as much as 10 months ahead of the normal population. This means, parents can expect babies and young kids who are involved in swim classes to reach levels of reasoning in areas like reading, writing, and arithmetic significantly ahead of their peers. This can set the stage for a life of academic success.
Language Skills
Swimming lessons can be an important building block in your child’s language learning. Think about this, what is said during a swimming lesson? There is counting, commands, directions, colors (“swim to the red ring”), etc. It is proven that children can count to 10 upwards of 2 years ahead of their peers just from swimming lessons. Your child’s language development can be advanced by years from simply taking a swimming lesson a week.
Social/Emotional
Not only is important to strive to have cognitive success, every parent wants their child to be socially adept as well. Starting swimming lessons early on gives your child continuous interaction with other adults and children. If your child is taking private lessons, this gives you the opportunity to not only have them interact with someone new, but it also establishes listening skills to other adults. Group lessons do the same, with the addition of other children for them to interact, and eventually make friends with. It has been proven that children are a year or more ahead of their peers socially from taking swimming lessons.
As you can see, water safety is just one piece in the swimming puzzle. There are so many factors that can dramatically advance your child’s development by simply attending a swim lesson every week.
For more information on the Griffith University study mentioned above, check out this video:
