When learning to swim babies love to explore and play in shallow water. This shallow water play builds baby’s confidence and helps to teach them a respect for the water as they learn the difference between deep and shallow water. During shallow water paly, the adult caregiver must stay close by to provide supervision and encouragement. You may not realise but babies can even drown in very shallow water, so caregivers must be able to respond quickly, so stary within arms reach of baby when in the water.
Here below in our recent youtube video you can see Lulu exploring freely and building confidence and independence in Shallow Water:
During water play it’s very easy for baby to topple underwater and not be able to right themselves back into a sitting or standing position. Baby will love to practice self-submersions and perform independent recoveries in shallow water but this must always be done under active adult supervision.
There are many free resources available on baby swimming in our resources section and our full baby swimming lesson course is only a click away!