Teaching Children to Go Underwater

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Samantha with Sharks and Minnows Swim School and Brianna and I are going to show you a couple of ways to get your child comfortable going underwater. You want to make sure that they understand what’s going to happen and that they know to close their mouth and hold their breath. So the first thing that we’re going to do is wash off. So Brianna can you wash your face, can you put the water on your face? Very good, if they do it lonelily that’s great. If not you can help them. Are you ready for a shower? 1, 2, 3, very good, good girl! You also want to make sure that they understand how to expel the water from their mouth. In other wards how to blow bubbles. So we can start off with some bubble soap just to get the idea across of blowing bubbles. You want to blow bubbles? Okay, let me go first, your turn, you blow them, very good one more time. Bubble soap is a great way to get kids interested without that fear factor. Once they’re comfortable with their face in the water you can actually move over to the wall and see if they’ll put their whole head in there. Once they’re comfortable holding on to the wall and they have a little independence, we can play a game we call the elevator game. Where do elevators go? Up and where else? Up and down, so we’re going to be elevators and go up and then go down. Can I go first? Okay, here I go, now your turn. Perfect! So you can play the elevator game, there are a lot of games that you can do to get your child comfortable going underwater and this is just one of them."