By Lila Baltman
Now that kids are back in school, many parents have been enrolling their children in after-school swim lessons. “Back-to-school is a great time to enroll children in swim lessons during the week or on the weekend,” says Ann Marie Sunderhaus, CEO of Hubbard Family Swim Schools. Bob & Kathy Hubbard founded the swim school in 1998, and are world-renowned experts and educators in the field of infant swimming. “Not only is swimming excellent exercise for children to enjoy after school and a wonderful way for them to burn off energy, we don’t want children to lose the important swim skills and swim strokes they learned over the summer.”
According to a Griffith University study which surveyed 7,000 parents from Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. over three years, children who learn to swim demonstrate more advanced cognitive and physical abilities than other children. They scored significantly better than non-swimmers on a number of measures that are very important for their cognitive, physical, and language development.
Other findings indicate that swimming children have many advantages when starting school. One study showed that children’s fine motor skills and overall coordination were more developed as a result of taking swim lessons, and it showed that children who start lessons early were more socially and emotionally ready to start school.
In 2019, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) also formally stated that children and parents need to learn to swim. Basic water competency swim skills include the ability to enter the water, surface, turn around, propel oneself for at least 25 yards and then exit the water.
Sign your child up for swim lessons to lay a strong foundation for skilled, confident swimmers. “We have spent over 20 years here in Arizona watching thousands of children under the age of 4 become calm and confident swimmers,” adds Sunderhaus. “It’s such a joy for us to help introduce children to the wonderful sport of swimming which can easily become a life-long sport.”
If you live in Phoenix, give Hubbard Family Swim School a try!
