I was reminded on Tuesday, on a very very hot day at the pool, how there is a clear division between “letting kids play in the water” and “teaching them to swim.”

Letting children play is a nice strategy for children who are not yet ready to put their heads under the water and try to swim. Letting kids “splash about” is the best way for them to discover water and how water can be easy, friendly, and enjoyable.

But when a child is going under the water and trying to keep him or herself up in the water, it’s time for the adult to step in and participate so that the child can easily make the transition from splashing about to really swimming.

I’ve been a swimmer for fifty-seven years. I learned by inching my way into the water until my brother and his friends decided to take me out to where the big boats were docked and throw me in. I knew enough to put two and two together and make my way back to the dock.  I know that there is a clear separation between those who can keep themselves up in the water and make their way to safety, and those who will sink and die. The whole concept of taking children swimming every summer is to put more kids on the “make your way to safety” than sink and die.

When you make the step toward swimming fun and exciting…a game…children respond well. The whole idea is to find a space in the swimming pool that is too deep for the child to touch, but shallow enough for the adult to be able to stand comfortably with head and shoulders above the water.

When children delight in standing on the side of the pool and jumping to an attending adult, they forget their fears, and simply engage in playing at jumping farther and farther to the adult and then tackling the huge task of swimming back to the wall where they can climb out and jump again. What they are not putting together is that in the shallow end, they can keep themselves up for three seconds, but while they are jumping to an adult, the swim from the adult to the wall is much farther than three seconds worth of swimming.

If the adult is as sneaky as this adult, the game begins with a five feet jump, and ends in a fifteen feet jump. There’s a big difference. For a child to swim five feet, he has to paddle about three seconds. For a child to swim fifteen feet, it’s more like fifteen seconds. There’s a big difference.

Once a child jumps to the adult and turns on his own to go back to the wall, the game is up, and he or she is really swimming. Next step….the diving board. If a child can hurl him or herself into space, and go down deep in the water…and come up and casually swim to the side of the pool…common…he or she is swimming FOR REAL! And that’s the way we do it at the Garden School.