Day 257/365: Friday's Unscientific Poll: Swimming Lessons

[nanila]

Poll #20449 Swimming lessons

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 82

I know how to swim.

Yes
78 (95.1%)

No.
4 (4.9%)

I had swimming lessons

As a child.
64 (78.0%)

As an adult.
4 (4.9%)

Never.
16 (19.5%)

[Optional] I never had swimming lessons because

Humuhumu has been having swimming lessons for about 14 months now. She started in the summer before she began school. She passed Stage 1 fairly quickly, but it has taken her a long time to get through Stage 2, which she officially passed today. This means she can move from the shallow learner's pool, which is only 80 cm deep into the "big" pool, which starts at 90 cm. She had to swim for five metres unaided on both her front and her back in order to move to Stage 3. She can actually swim 10 metres on her front, possibly more.

Keiki's going to start swimming lessons Sunday next, with the same awesome teacher that Humuhumu had. She's going to have a new teacher in Stage 3.

I never had swimming lessons because I grew up in Hawai'i. We always lived in places with swimming pools (apartment complexes and the like) or close enough to the beach for me to be able to go there every day. No indoor pools or heated water needed. I don't have any memories of not being able to swim, so I must have learnt quite early. Watching Humuhumu go through swimming lessons has therefore been a novelty for me. She's already a lot more comfortable being totally immersed than I was. It makes me think that it would have been good for me to have had lessons, as I'd probably be a much better swimmer now.

Comments

[marymac]

My dad taught me to swim at an age so young that I don't remember not being able to, making the compulsory school swimming lessons in P5 and P7 crucifyingly painful because they didn't have enough instructors to allow for the five competent swimmers to do anything but stand around freezing slowly while the other 25 were hauled through the basics. It did stand me in good stead for coaching sailing though, which often involved hanging off things in cold water until the kids were retrieved and you could start untangling whatever upended you in the first place.

Despite the other half having swim competitively at one point, Child has had school swimming only and as with many things in her secondary school, they only seem to put effort into kids who are already good, so I've spent chunks of each holiday coaching her up to speed. But we need to get her an actual instructor for a few lessons because the breathing through crawl comes so naturally to me that I can't find a way to explain it and then she just holds her breath and powers through until she sinks.