Holding your breath under water and in water can be very scary or anxiety inducing to a lot of children and even some adults. There is a very real fear of water and learning to better control breathing and holding your breath can make a huge difference in comfortability.
We get asked a lot on what you can do to help your child become safer around the water at home on your own. As a parent, we can't always be around our children or others at all times. Being able to instill a comfort level with them so they can feel strong enough to get themselves out of potentially dangerous situations is one of our best lessons to teach!
The first step for anyone learning
to swim is proper breath control.
Obviously breathing is hands down the most important item to learn to control first when beginning to get comfortable in the water. If you have ever swam for more than 5 seconds, you can very quickly see how breathing becomes more difficult and your heart rate elevates making it harder to breath.
As a child we have to teach our children not only how to hold their breath, but also why they need to hold their breath. We can't exactly go into an explanation of oxygen levels in our blood in order to stay alive with a 2 year old...
As instructors we use a simple cue to help children and even babies recognize when it's time to go under the water. By being consistent with our cue even little 
ones that haven't learned to talk yet can begin to swim under the water with ease.
So when swimming with your kids start using a cue for everything! And I bet you already are an expert at this, how many times have you said ready set go,
or 1... 2... 3.
By introducing this to your kids in the pool they will start to anticipate things, better preparing them for safe swimming.
One of the first things my infants learn is that they can not leave the step to swim out to me until I give the cue, that way if my hands are full or I'm working with a sibling they will remain in a safe place until we are both ready!
As an always note, situations can become dangerous very quickly, as we are teaching our little ones to learn to hold their breath in the water we want to be even more cautious and attentive to them. Just like when my boys learned to jump off the couch, it can escalate very quickly and then they get themselves hurt. The same rules apply in the water.
As we are teaching them, have fun with it, but be sure to remember it is a learning curve for the little ones and the more practice and time you can take spending on it will make all the difference.
Hope you liked our tip this month, be sure to leave us comments about your experience teaching your littles ones how to hold their breath and give us other great ideas of what to write about!
