Fear is the number one barrier to learning to swim - both for adults and children. Generally the younger the child is when they start swimming, the more at ease they will be with the water and the easier their learn-to-swim journey will be.
Studies have shown that children who start swimming lessons from two or three years of age learn basic swimming skills much more quickly than children who begin learning to swim at the age of four. We see this time and time again in our Stage 1 lessons: the children who've come up from our parent and child lessons are often ahead of the group even from lesson one.
However, it should be borne in mind children under the age of four won't necessarily have the muscular strength and coordination, or the psychological maturity, to master the repetitive movements needed to learn the four swim strokes (American Academy of Paediatrics).
So although children won't necessarily be ready to start learning the four main swimming strokes until they are around the age of four, starting lessons younger than this (in an environment that's fun, supportive and encouraging) is likely to mean they learn faster than if they start at the age of four.
Our parent and baby/child lessons are for children ages 3 months to around 3 years and are based on promoting water confidence and safety awareness and introducing children to the aquatic skills which will lay the foundation for learning to swim. Children have the reassurance of their grown up in the water with them to support them and share the fun.
Our Stage 1 lessons are group lessons for children from around the age of 4 without their grown up in the water (although we recognise when children in our parent and child lessons demonstrate tendencies to be able to flourish in an independent group lesson). It's at this stage we start to introduce the goal of learning to swim recognised strokes independently.
We receive lots of enquiries from parents asking if their children younger than four can join our Stage 1 lessons and for the reasons set out above this isn't an approach we adopt.