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Baby swimming lessons: When babies can swim

Many parents look forward to taking their children in the water and teaching them how to swim – it's a great way to bond and have fun together, and many babies love the water.

It's important for kids to learn how to swim – and learn about basic water safety – early in life to help prevent drowning. Babies can start learning to swim around age 1, though they won't master swimming skills until they're at least 4 years old.

Can babies swim?

You may have heard a popular myth that babies are born with the ability to swim. This isn't true, though newborns have reflexes that can make it look like they're swimming.

A reflex called the bradycardic response (also called the diving reflex) makes babies hold their breath and open their eyes when submerged in water. (You can cause this same reaction by blowing in your baby's face.) This reflex starts to go away after six months, but may last for up to a year.

Many baby swim classes rely on these reflexes to help babies "swim," but babies aren't old enough to hold their breath intentionally or strong enough to keep their head above water. They won't be developmentally ready to learn how to swim until they're older.

Even though your baby can't swim yet, you can bring them into the water with you once they're about 6 months old. Some babies really enjoy getting in the water, so feel free to make playing in the pool or splashing in a lake or river a family affair. Just make sure to put your baby in a well-fitting infant life jacket anytime they're near water or on a boat.

When your baby is 6 months old, you can join a parent-child swimming class. You'll be in the water with your baby during these classes. Swimming classes can help babies become comfortable in the water, and can be fun for you both. Babies are too young at this point to learn to swim, however.

Once your child is a year old, early swim lessons can help them gain confidence in the water, teach them water safety basics, and prepare them for independent swim lessons when they're older. Experts say taking your toddler to swim classes at this age can help reduce the risk of drowning.

By the time your child is 3 or 4 years old, they're likely ready for independent swim lessons. They'll learn basic skills like floating, treading water, and figuring out how to get out of the water. Kids can learn more advanced skills, like various swim strokes, when they're 5 or 6.

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The most important thing is that your child is comfortable and having fun during swim lessons. If you take them and they're consistently scared of the water or uncomfortable in a class setting, take a break and wait until your child's more comfortable in the water before going to formal lessons. (Instead, get a small kiddie pool to play in at home, or spend some time together at a pool.)

If you're not sure whether your child is ready for swim lessons but you want to start, your pediatrician can help you decide what's best – and help you find a good swim program.

Here are some things to look for in a good swim class:

• Experienced, qualified instructors and on-duty lifeguards with CPR and first-aid training.
• Lessons on safety around water as well as while swimming.
• Lessons on emergency water safety – what to do and how to get help if you or someone else falls into water unexpectedly.
• Multiple sessions so your child can build on the skills they're learning.
• For baby and toddler classes, look for touch supervision, where an adult is within arm's reach of a child at all times.

If you want to sign your child up for swim lessons but can't afford it, your city government may have a scholarship program to help cover swimming lessons at your local public pool. You can also talk to individual swim programs about payment plans or scholarships.

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Mammals can swim, but there is a strange exception

• Josh Gabbatiss
• BBC Earth

31 July 2017

Image Credit, iStock

A popular myth is that some mammals - including camels and pigs - can't swim. Observer BBC Earth found out that this is not so: only one species of mammals can hardly keep afloat. Guess which one.

My girlfriend's grandparents (named Audrey and Hamish) are very inquisitive. They are both very interested in biology, and one day they decided to test Audrey's favorite theory.

"I've always believed that all mammals can, firstly, produce milk and, secondly, swim," she says. "Not at the same time, of course."

One day they and their daughters gathered around the pond in the garden, taking their pet guinea pigs with them.

"In case something went wrong, we had a fishing net. We put the pig in the water, and like a dog - so to speak of a guinea pig - swam from one side of the pond to the other."

"This is our only experiment so far," says Hamish.

He believes that since most mammals walk on all fours, they should be able to float instinctively and be able to swim like a dog. But is he right?

Image copyright, iStock

Can most mammals instinctively stay afloat and swim like a dog?

Some mammals are undoubtedly natural swimmers. Whales, fur seals and otters in the process of evolution have acquired the ability to easily move through the water.

Many land mammals can also be called skilled swimmers - dogs, of course, but other domestic animals are not far behind, including sheep and cows.

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Even cats are good swimmers, although most of them do not like this process very much.

At the same time, other species have a reputation for poor swimmers, such as camels. Yes, they are called the ships of the desert, but why do they need the ability to swim if they rarely see water?

From conversations with camel veterinarians and camel breeders, it turned out that humpbacked quadrupeds, oddly enough, willingly enter the water that they meet on their way.

This is especially true for Harai camels, known as the floating camels of Gujarat.

Speaking of pigs, one immediately comes to mind a poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in which the devil watches a pig swimming down the river, gloatingly expecting that it is about to cut its own throat with its sharp hooves.

But this is very unfair to pigs, and the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism will be happy to tell you that.

On the island of Big Major Key, a colony of seafaring pigs has settled there, which has become a real landmark of the archipelago, proudly calling itself the "Official Residence of Swimming Pigs".

Photo credit, iStock

Bahamian pigs can and love to swim

Photo credit, iStock

Elephants are excellent swimmers

Photo credit, iStock

Camels love to enter water they encounter

Previously, scientists assumed that elephants, the largest land animals in existence today, could not swim.

If this were the case, biogeographers would have to look for complex explanations for the presence of elephant fossils on islands off the coast of California and China, as well as in the Mediterranean Sea.

Elephants are actually excellent swimmers, able to swim up to 50 km at a time. Scientists even suggest that the elephant's trunk originally served as a breathing tube while swimming.

Even an armadillo, despite having a bulky shell, can float on the water by swallowing air and thereby inflating the stomach and intestines, which helps it compensate for its weight.

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Well, not bad for a start. But there are 5416 known species of mammals in the world. To prove that they all know how to swim, many creatures will have to be thrown into the pond, which will not be at all delighted with this.

"I must say that similar experiments have already been done," says Frank Fish, a swimming expert at West Chester University (Pennsylvania, USA).

No one managed to assess the swimming abilities of absolutely all mammals, but there were times when an animal was simply thrown into the water for this.

In their 1973 study, Anne Dagg and Doug Windsor placed 27 species of land animals, from shrews to skunks, in a three-meter-long tank of water and see if they could stay afloat.

Fortunately, everyone could swim, even a bat, which moved "with the help of heavy wing beats, reminiscent of the movements of a person swimming with a butterfly."

Image copyright iStock

Some mammals are natural swimmers

Unfortunately, it was often not enough for scientists to determine whether an animal can swim or not.

The work of Dagg and Windsor mentions the work carried out in the late 50s and 60s. a series of "inhumane experiments in which animals of various species were forced to swim until they were exhausted or died."

Today, fortunately, such experiments are hardly possible. "Ethics are changing, and what was acceptable then is not acceptable now," confirms Fish.

Be that as it may, these experiments can serve as confirmation of Audrey's theory, especially considering that even such animals as bats, not adapted to life in water, can move on water.

Why is this skill inherent in so many mammals, even those who do not need to swim?

According to Fish, this is a side effect of their anatomy.

"Mammals have fairly large lungs, which gives them good buoyancy," he explains. "Hair is also important, but the larger the animal, the less it means to him."

"All of these things keep mammals afloat," says Fish. "And if you can float, you can swim."

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Does this mean that absolutely all mammals can swim?

In one work on the delightfully exotic subject, "The Swimming Ability of the Golden Hamster," dated 1963, says: "It is widely known that most wild mammals can swim."

Most, but not all. It follows from the scientific literature that scientists have agreed that there are two groups of non-swimming mammals: giraffes and higher primates.

Image copyright, iStock

A giraffe will be able to stay afloat, but water will constantly enter its nostrils. With such an unusual body structure, it seems quite plausible that this animal is unlikely to be able to stay afloat.

No one has yet ventured the gamble of building a water tank the size of a giraffe, but thanks to the curiosity of some paleontologists, this may not be necessary.

Intrigued by the numerous references in the scientific literature to the notion that giraffes cannot swim, science writer and palaeontologist Darren Neish set out to test this hypothesis.

"I am very skeptical of such claims, especially in light of the fact that other animals previously considered unable to swim, including giant tortoises, pigs, rhinos and camels, actually swim well or even very well," wrote he's on his Tetrapod Zoology blog.

To develop an ethical experiment that does not require water, Naish contacted Donald Henderson of the Royal Tyrrell Paleontological Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada.

Henderson specializes in creating computer models of animals, both extinct and preserved to this day.

"Initially, I created these models to study the movement of animals and determine their body weight, but then I realized that they can help evaluate swimming abilities as well," he explains.

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By a happy coincidence, Henderson already had a finished model of a giraffe, so the scientists decided to finally determine whether a giraffe could float on water.

"We've found that the giraffe will be able to float and keep its head close to the surface, but it will constantly get water in its nostrils," says Henderson.

He explains that because of its long limbs, this animal will move very clumsily through the water.

"The giraffe can still swim, but it will be very difficult for him, and I understand why giraffes are not eager to try," he concludes.

Image copyright, iStock

Primates can't swim naturally, but they can learn

Primates' swimming abilities have been tested in much less humane ways. Ethologist Robert Yerkes tells a story that happened at the beginning of the 20th century.

William Hornaday, founder of the Bronx Zoo, led a pet orangutan to a stream for a swim.

"Positioning him above the water, I let him go, although he resisted. Did he swim? Hardly. In the blink of an eye, he turned upside down, and his head went down, as if instead of a brain it was lead," he writes .

Unfortunately, this cruel experiment is no exception. Yerkes himself describes throwing young chimpanzees into the water to see if they would sink or swim out.

"Without exception, everyone was actively floundering in the water and quickly went under the water," he notes.

This is why zoos often use water ditches to prevent primates from escaping.

Hornaday also wrote that "instead of vigorously swinging his arms and legs, as do other animals, he (orangutan) simply spread them apart, and they stuck out of his body like sticks, which he moved slowly and listlessly" .

Obviously, there is something that prevents the great primates from coordinating their movements when swimming.

"Many people think that chimpanzees can't swim because they can't float," says Renato Bender, a researcher at the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. "But that's not the point, it's the technique of swimming."

Image copyright, iStock

Kangaroos can escape predators in the water

In his opinion, most mammals swim instinctively, as they actually make the same movements as on land (as my grandfather suggested girlfriends).

"When swimming, tetrapods actually use an already established movement pattern," Fish says. That is why quadrupeds swim like a dog.

George Wilson of the Australian National University in Canberra notes that kangaroos can jump into the water to escape predators.

According to his observations, when a large red kangaroo without swimming experience enters the water, even it swims like a dog, despite the fact that it moves on land by jumping.

He concludes that this may be a "return to the past" of their evolutionary history.

Even the most aquatic creatures swim in much the same way. "The dolphin is actually running underwater, albeit without legs," Fish says.

But primates are also tetrapods, so why doesn't this logic work in their case?

In 2013, Bender and his wife Nicole, a medical researcher at the University of Bern in Switzerland, challenged the conventional wisdom that primates cannot swim.

They made a video of a chimpanzee named Cooper and an orangutan named Suriya swimming across the pools without any problems. This was the first video evidence that higher primates are still able to swim.

Image copyright, iStock

Many of us learned to swim as children

The primates filmed weren't able to swim from birth, they had to learn how to swim.

Bender, formerly a swimming coach, noticed one important feature of their technique: they swam more breaststroke than doggy style.

In his opinion, such differences in swimming technique did not arise by chance, but appeared in the process of evolution.

The ancestors of these primates adapted to life in the trees, and they no longer needed to go into the water, and their nervous and motor systems and anatomical structure underwent changes that allowed them to move more dexterously through the trees.

As a result, the ancient ancestor of primates lost not only the desire, but also the ability to swim like a dog.

On the rare occasions when primates do learn to swim, due to the increased mobility of their limbs associated with living in trees, it becomes more natural for them to kick off the water with their feet, which is characteristic of breaststroke.

It follows that swimming is not just a beneficial side effect of being buoyant and having four limbs. Through the process of natural selection, the ability to swim in all other mammals was actively maintained.

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However, Fish thinks this theory is far-fetched. "Mammals weaned themselves from the water during the Devonian period, when sea creatures began to come to land," he explains. "It's been too long to hope for a return to the past."

Nevertheless, Audrey's hypothesis is not far from the truth. It turns out that swimming has played an amazing role in the lives of animals, and perhaps this skill is much more important than we thought so far.

One cannot fail to mention the mammal for which swimming has gone far beyond biology - another non-swimming superior primate, man.

Image copyright, iStock

Babies lack the natural ability to swim, scientists say

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There's a common misconception that babies can swim from birth, perhaps linked to Nirvana's famous album cover.

However, this is not actually the case. Babies do hold their breath when submerged in water, but this should not be confused with swimming.

Breath-holding is part of the mammalian diving reflex, that is, a set of physiological changes associated with immersion in water, characteristic of all mammals (and most pronounced in marine species).

Just like Cooper and Surya, our fellow primates, humans have to learn to swim.

But being smarter primates, we've gotten pretty good at it.

The world's best divers and Olympic swimmers set records unthinkable for any other land mammal.

People learn to swim for work and leisure, and for certain cultural reasons.

Our strong, compared to other primates, love of water became one of the traits on the basis of which the so-called aquatic theory arose.

It says that many of the defining characteristics of humans (lack of hair, bipedalism, large brains, etc.) were formed during the period of our evolutionary history when we led a semi-aquatic lifestyle.

Despite the fact that the aquatic theory lacks scientific evidence, it has quite a few supporters.

Bender believes that its popularity has hindered serious research into the relationship of primates to water and the impact that water may have had on our behavior and evolution.

"I would like people to understand that we need to separate the 'role of water in human evolution' from aquatic theory and then start studying it scientifically," he says.

"There is a lot of evidence that chimpanzees and orangutans are willing to play with water for hours. Water is very interesting and attracts smart animals, and we are just smart animals," says Bender.

Read the original of this article in English can be found on the site BBC Earth.

Baby swimming - articles from the specialists of the clinic "Mother and Child"

Arefieva Natalya Yurievna

Dentist, Dentist-therapist for children, Dentist-therapist for adults

Lapino-1 Clinical Hospital "Mother and Child"

arguments for

Immediately after birth, the child from the aquatic environment enters the air, where he begins to breathe on his own . But for some time after the birth, the child retains the breath-holding reflex, and sometimes he can even swim and breathe properly at the same time. Many methods of infant swimming are based on this, especially the technique called diving, when diving and breathing under water are fixed. Therefore, supporters of infant swimming believe that in the first months of a child's life, the swimming reflex and the ability to hold the breath must be developed and consolidated, otherwise they will simply be forgotten and in the future the baby will have to be taught everything again.

And of course, being in the water hardens the baby, trains his cardiovascular system, develops the musculoskeletal system, in general, strengthens the child's health in every possible way.

arguments against

Opponents of infant swimming, especially diving. have their own, and very weighty, arguments.

• The ability to stay afloat and hold your breath are protective reflexes, they are saved only at first for use in critical situations, which adults recreate in the pool. In other words, this is an artificial simulation of a critical situation, which is accompanied by stress for the baby.
• From the point of view of physiology, if the reflex of holding the breath in water should die out, then it must be allowed to do so - after all, nature intended this for a reason.
• It is not necessary for a child to swim for physical development. This can be too stressful for a baby who does not even know how to crawl yet.
• Baby swimming (especially in public pools and baths) can lead to inflammatory diseases of the ear, nasopharynx, respiratory tract, and in some people even weaken the immune system. And swallowing water can cause indigestion.

what to choose

Bathing and swimming itself is not harmful, but rather useful. It is harmful to carry out this procedure incorrectly, not to take into account the developmental characteristics of the child and use the wrong methods. Pediatricians, neurologists and neurophysiologists believe that, for example, the so-called diving (when a child’s head is immersed under water so that he learns to dive) leads to brain hypoxia (albeit short-term), and it is not known how this will affect the condition of the baby. In addition, the stress that occurs at this moment is also likely to affect the child negatively. Both hypoxia, and stress, and simply extra loads often lead to some kind of developmental disorders. One child will start to get sick more often (and not necessarily with colds), the other will become more excited than necessary, or in the future it will be worse to concentrate.

Therefore, it is possible for a baby to swim, you just need to take into account several factors.

find a swimming pool and instructor

Being a swimming instructor is very important. As such, there is no specialty “baby swimming coach”: most likely, the instructor will take some short-term courses. The main thing here is his experience and your trust in him. Before the start of the lesson, talk to the instructor, or even better, go and see how he conducts the classes, how he relates to the desire or unwillingness of the child to do some kind of action, how comfortable the baby is with the instructor. First, the child must get used to the instructor, and only then should classes begin. No sudden movements, haste and discomfort. Both parents, and the kid, and the instructor should be on the same wavelength.

While the child is small, you can swim at home, in your own bath; when the baby grows up, look for a clean and warm children's pool with a good water purification system, with pleasant conditions and a benevolent environment.

listen to the child

It is impossible to find out from the baby himself how much he likes what is done to him while swimming. There are children who smile and laugh while in the water; there are those who scream and cry even during a simple bath, especially when swimming (and certainly when diving). And it happens that the baby, as it were, freezes emotionally during swimming - here it is generally difficult to guess about his reaction. Therefore, starting water procedures, listen and look closely at the child. And accept his wish. Start with a regular bath in a bath, then gradually move into an adult bath. And you can immediately dive into a large bath with the child, holding him in his arms or at his chest - this way he will be even calmer (though, for this, you will first need helpers). If swimming brings positive emotions to the baby, you are on the right track. If the child is naughty and nervous, the more clearly he demonstrates his unwillingness to swim, give up this idea and postpone swimming until better times.

simple exercises

You can train with the baby on your own, just do the following exercises:

• steps in the water – an adult holds the child upright, helping him to push off from the bottom of the tub;
• wiring on the back - the baby lies on his back, the adult supports the head of the crumbs and leads the child along the bath;
• wiring on the tummy - all the same, only the child lies on the stomach;
• exercise with a toy - you need to lead the child after the toy, gradually accelerating and explaining: our toy is swimming away, let's catch up with it.

When swimming, don't aim for anything spectacular, the health, safety and enjoyment of your little one is the most important thing for now.

There is no unequivocal opinion whether a baby should swim or not, because the experience of each family is individual. There are children who, even before the age of one, easily and joyfully master the aquatic environment, and there are those who do not like water for a long time and agree to classes only at a conscious age. Therefore, focus only on the desire of your child.

Before the start of classes, be sure to show the child to a pediatrician and a neurologist who observe him in order to exclude possible contraindications for infant swimming

Often, children with whom infant swimming was practiced, at a more conscious age, have to be taught swimming again, according to standard methods

Often diving is perceived by the child as a potential danger

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