News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

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Watch­ing Your Child at Swim Lessons or Swim Practice

By Guy Edson

For many years I watched my daugh­ter swim under the direc­tion of other coaches. I have also watched her at bas­ket­ball prac­tice and games, and dance, and fig­ure skat­ing. I know the joy of watch­ing her in these activ­i­ties. I also know and under­stand the over­whelm­ing desire to direct, cor­rect, encour­age, and some­times scold her at prac­tice. But these are not proper parental behav­iors once I have released her into the care of a coach or teacher. As a par­ent, I am not to inter­fere with the prac­tice or attempt to talk to my child dur­ing the prac­tice session.

At swim prac­tice coaches want the children’s atten­tion focused on the coach and the tasks at hand. Occa­sion­ally chil­dren miss an instruc­tion, or have a gog­gle prob­lem, or are involved in some other dis­trac­tion, or are sim­ply play­ing and hav­ing fun – which are all nor­mal behav­iors for young chil­dren. Coaches view these lit­tle dif­fi­cul­ties as oppor­tu­ni­ties for the chil­dren to develop good lis­ten­ing skills, abil­ity to rea­son, and self dis­ci­pline. Some­times we allow fail­ure on pur­pose — a missed instruc­tion leav­ing the child con­fused often results in the child learn­ing to pay bet­ter atten­tion the next time. We endeavor to pro­vide an envi­ron­ment for the chil­dren to develop these skills. A well-intentioned and over-enthusiastic mom or dad some­times has dif­fi­culty allow­ing their child to miss some­thing and wants to inter­fere. It’s understandable.

We know it is com­mon in many other youth sports for par­ents to stand at the side­lines and shout instruc­tions or encour­age­ments and some­times admon­ish­ments to their chil­dren. How­ever, at swim prac­tice coaches ask par­ents not to sig­nal them to swim faster, or to tell them to try a cer­tain tech­nique, or to offer to fix a gog­gle prob­lem, or to move away from some other “men­ac­ing” swim­mer, or even to remind them to lis­ten to the coach. In fact, just as you would never inter­rupt a school class­room to talk your child, you should not inter­rupt a swim prac­tice by attempt­ing to com­mu­ni­cate directly with your child.

What’s wrong with encour­ag­ing your child dur­ing prac­tice? There are two issues. First we want your child to focus on the coach and to learn the skill for their per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion rather than learn­ing it to please their par­ents. Sec­ondly, parental encour­age­ment often gets trans­lated into a com­mand to swim faster and swim­ming faster may be the exact oppo­site of what the coach is try­ing to accom­plish. In most stroke skill devel­op­ment prac­tices we first slow the swim­mers down so that they can think through the stroke motions. Save encour­age­ments and praise for after the prac­tice ses­sion! This is the time when you have your child’s full atten­tion to tell them how proud you are of them.

What’s wrong with shout­ing or sig­nal­ing instruc­tions to your chil­dren? When I watched my old daugh­ter play in a bas­ket­ball league I felt an over­whelm­ing desire to shout instruc­tions to my child and so I under­stand the feel­ings that most par­ents have. But those instruc­tions might be dif­fer­ent from the coach’s instruc­tions and then you end up with a con­fused child. Some­times you might think the child did not hear the coach’s instruc­tion and you want to help. Most of us do not want to see our own kids make a mis­take. The fact is that chil­dren miss instruc­tions all the time. Part of the learn­ing process is learn­ing how to lis­ten to instruc­tions. When chil­dren learn to rely on a backup they will have more dif­fi­culty learn­ing how to lis­ten bet­ter the first time.

As par­ents, many of us want our chil­dren pro­tected from dis­com­fort and adver­sity and we will attempt to cre­ate or place them in an envi­ron­ment free from dis­tress. So, what’s wrong with help­ing your child fix their gog­gles dur­ing prac­tice time? Quite sim­ply, we want to encour­age the chil­dren to become self-reliant and learn to take care of and be respon­si­ble for them­selves and their own equip­ment. Swim­ming prac­tice is a ter­rific place to learn these life skills. Yes, even begin­ning at age 6 or 7.

If you need to speak to your child regard­ing a fam­ily issue or a trans­porta­tion issue or to take your child from prac­tice early you are cer­tainly wel­come to do so but please approach the coach directly with your request and we will imme­di­ately get your child out of the water. If you need to speak to the coach for other rea­sons please wait until the end of practice.

Thanks for bring­ing your chil­dren to swim prac­tice. Every swim coach I know coaches each child with care for their safety and con­cern for their social, phys­i­cal, learn­ing skills, and life skills development.

Dear USA Swim­ming Member,

The US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in part­ner­ship with Dis­cov­ery Edu­ca­tion has requested our sport’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in a research project. Your thoughts and views are crit­i­cal to this study.

The aim of this USADA project is to enhance their edu­ca­tion pro­gram by con­duct­ing com­pre­hen­sive research that deter­mines society’s view on the impact of sport. A key objec­tive of this research will be to cap­ture sport’s impact in par­tic­u­lar on youth par­tic­i­pa­tion and activ­i­ties, and youth atti­tudes and values.

Please be assured that all answers pro­vided to us are to be used for research pur­poses only. The sur­vey also con­sists of ques­tions that you and your child (between the ages of 8 – 12) can answer together. If you are a par­ent of a child under 13, you will need to pro­vide con­sent for your child to par­tic­i­pate in the sur­vey by select­ing the appro­pri­ate response within the sur­vey. If your child is age 13 – 17 they can answer ques­tions either with you or inde­pen­dently. If your child is not avail­able at the time you take the sur­vey, you can log back in at a later time to com­plete those ques­tions and pick up where you left off. Please do not com­plete the sur­vey on your child’s behalf. All responses will be anony­mous (there will be no data that will iden­tify you or your child per­son­ally or link you to your responses) and will be used only in com­bi­na­tion with other responses we receive.

Your par­tic­i­pa­tion is com­pletely vol­un­tary so if you don’t want to par­tic­i­pate, you cer­tainly don’t have to. Should you choose to par­tic­i­pate, there is an oppor­tu­nity to reg­is­ter in a $5 Sports Author­ity gift card sweep­stakes as a thank you. If you would like to be included in that draw­ing, then you will be asked to pro­vide your e-mail address at the end of the sur­vey. Note that this does not affect the anony­mous nature of the sur­vey in any way. To begin the sur­vey, please click on the link below. If this does not work, please cut and paste the address into your web browser.

We think that this data will prove to be mean­ing­ful and insight­ful and we hope that you will want to par­tic­i­pate! We know that there will be great inter­est in respond­ing to this study, and we can accom­mo­date a good num­ber of sub­mis­sions; how­ever, keep in mind that there will be a point at which the sur­vey must con­clude due to the num­ber reached. It will be impor­tant to respond as quickly as pos­si­ble to ensure your oppor­tu­nity to par­tic­i­pate. A mes­sage will be pro­vided imme­di­ately upon open­ing the sur­vey if it has closed. If you have any ques­tions about the sur­vey, please con­tact comments@imoderate.com.

All research on human vol­un­teers is reviewed by a com­mit­tee that works to pro­tect your rights and wel­fare. If you have ques­tions or con­cerns about your rights as a research sub­ject, or if you would like to obtain infor­ma­tion or offer input, you may con­tact the Insti­tu­tional Review Board at 919−966−3113 or by email to IRB_subjects@unc.edu.

We encour­age you to take the time to com­plete this impor­tant sur­vey and show your sup­port for the integrity of your sport, and our col­lec­tive sup­port of USADA. Thank you for your time.

http://survey.confirmit.com/wix/p1076189338.aspx?SAM=3

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