General FAQs

  • Our swim safety program helps children gain confidence while ensuring they master essential survival swim techniques, such as:

    • Floating independently to stay above water

    • Controlling their breathing in water

    • Learning to roll over, swim, and self-rescue

    For children with unique learning needs, we also offer adaptive swim lessons taught by certified adaptive swim instructors. This ensures that every child—regardless of ability—has access to high-quality swim survival lessons in a way that suits their individual needs.

  • YES! At SafeSwimSolutions, our lessons are designed with safety first as our top priority. The program follows strict water safety protocols to ensure a safe, effective learning environment.

    All SafeSwimSolutions coaches receive specialized certification, ongoing mentorship, and yearly recertification to ensure the highest standards of aquatic instruction.

  • In March of 2019, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) updated its drowning prevention policy, outlining strategies to protect children at each stage of life.

    According to the AAP:

    “Evidence reveals that many children older than 1 year will benefit from swim lessons. Swim lessons are increasingly available for a wide range of children, including those with various health conditions and disabilities such as ASD. A parent or caregiver’s decision about when to initiate swim lessons must be individualized on the basis of a variety of factors, including comfort with being in the water, health status, emotional maturity, and physical and cognitive limitations. Although swim lessons provide 1 layer of protection from drowning, swim lessons do not ‘drown proof’ a child, and parents must continue to provide barriers to prevent unintended access when not in the water and closely supervise children when in and around water.

    “There is tremendous variability among swim lessons, and not every program will be right for each child. Parents and caregivers should investigate options for swim lessons in their community before enrollment to make sure that the program meets their needs and the needs of the child. High-quality swim lessons provide more experiential training, including swimming in clothes, in life jackets, falling in, and practicing self-rescue.”

    (Source: AAP Drowning Prevention Policy)

    At SafeSwimSolutions, we fully align with these recommendations, offering infant swim survival classes, toddler swim lessons, and baby swim lessons designed to enhance water safety for children. Our programs focus on infant aquatic survival, teaching children survival swim techniques that include floating, breathing, and self-rescue.

    We also provide adaptive swim lessons tailored for children with ASD and other learning challenges, ensuring every child has access to infant swimming lessons and toddler swim safety training that meets their individual needs.

    Parents looking for baby swim lessons should always research swim survival lessons for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and young children, programs to find high-quality instruction that prioritizes aquatic survival skills.

  • Absolutely! At SafeSwimSolutions, our survival swim lessons are designed to teach children not only aquatic survival skills but also build a strong foundation for independent swimming.

    How Your Child Progresses from Survival to Swimming:

    • Step 1: Learning to float independently for breath control and safety

    • Step 2: Transitioning from floating to incorporating a short swim, roll to float, and swim again technique

    • Step 3: Strengthening endurance and coordination to develop efficient swim strokes

    • Step 4: Advancing to freestyle and backstroke as confidence and ability grow

    Every child learns at their own pace, and our expert instructors adjust lessons based on each child’s physical and emotional readiness. Whether your child is starting with baby swim classes, toddler swim lessons, or preschool swim programs, we provide the best balance of survival swim training and skill development.

    Parents searching for baby swim lessons or private toddler swim lessons can trust that SafeSwimSolutions is committed to fostering strong, safe, and confident swimmers at every stage of their development.

  • Yes! Continuation lessons are essential because children grow and develop rapidly, both cognitively and physically, especially during their first 8 years of life. As they change, it’s important that their swim survival skills evolve with them to maintain water safety and confidence.

  • Children often fuss during the first few lessons because they are in a new environment and around new people. As your child becomes more confident in his/her ability in the water, the fussing will decrease.

    It is not unlike the first time you tried a new exercise class, or were asked to perform a task at work that you’d never done before: the first time you try a new task it is always challenging until you get the hang of it. It is the same for your young child. Your child is learning to perform a skill that he/she’s never done before.

  • There is an important difference between being fearful, and being apprehensive because you are not yet skilled in a new environment. SSS is not like traditional swim lessons; it is a drowning prevention program that teaches survival aquatic skills. As a parent, you make choices for your child’s safety, like sitting in a car seat, because you know it is important for their safety.

    Once competent in their skills, many children cannot be dragged away from the pool! They are having entirely too much FUN!

  • Young children don’t have the verbal skills to express themselves, and crying is a completely normal reaction for a child who is in a new and challenging situation. However, as the child’s skills increase in the pool, the fussing will decrease.

A young girl swimming in a pool reaches for a swim ring held by an outstretched hand.
Smiling young boy wrapped in a blue towel, outdoors on a sunny day with trees and backyard furniture in the background.

Learning Objectives, Methodology & Lesson Scheduling

  • No, babies cannot swim naturally. If this were the case, there wouldn’t be so many drownings every year. According to the CDC and Accident Prevention, drowning is the leading cause of accidental death in children ages 1-4.

  • Breath-holding skills are taught in the first lesson. We shape breath control using highly effective positive reinforcement techniques and continue to reinforce these techniques throughout every lesson.

  • SafeSwimSolutions Instructors teach infants to swim by honoring each child’s individual strengths and experiences. They understand the fundamentals of the behavioral sciences, child development, and sensory-motor learning. Verbal skills are not required for a child to acquire aquatic survival skills. We are able to communicate with students for success every step of the way.

  • The reason for this is multifaceted. First, repetition and consistency are crucial elements of learning for young children. Research shows that short, more frequent lessons result in higher retention. Second, most children have fairly short attention spans and will not be able to focus on the task for longer and we want to take advantage of the best time for learning. A third reason is that, though the pool temperature is maintained at 80-88 degrees, the temperature is still lower than your child’s body temperature. Lessons are work and therefore they will begin to lose body heat. Instructors check students regularly for temperature fatigue since this is an indicator of physical fatigue.

  • Like any physical skill, children don’t “forget” the skills, but will need to adjust their skills to account for their physical growth. In addition, children will explore and may pick up bad habits watching other children or with interference like floating in a bathtub or playing on the steps. As your child goes through lessons, you will begin to understand, through communication with your Instructor, what activities may interfere with their learned skills. Contacting and/or returning to your Instructor in a timely manner is imperative to maintaining effective habits.

  • Because 86% of children who fall in the water do so fully clothed, we want our students to have experience with such a situation. If a child has experienced the sensations of being in the water in clothing prior to an emergency situation, they are less likely to experience panic and be able to focus on the task at hand. If you have ever jumped in the water with clothes on, then you know that there is a significant difference in weight and feel with clothes as opposed to a bathing suit.

  • A baby does not need to perceive danger or be afraid to respond appropriately to being underwater. If a baby has learned to roll over and float when they need air, they do not need to perceive danger to respond in this manner. They need skill, practice, and confidence to calmly deal with the situation.

  • No. Every child can learn. It is our job to find the best way to communicate the information so that it makes sense to the child. We set your child up to be successful every time. We start at your child’s skill level and set them up for success in every lesson.

A young boy with red hair wearing a blue life jacket, being carried by an adult near a body of water.

Health & Water Safety

  • Constant, undivided, 100% effective supervision would be the only sure way to eliminate drowning. Unfortunately, as parents, we know this is simply not realistic. Infants and toddlers love to explore, and with everything else that goes on in our lives, parents can get distracted. A moment’s inattention can allow a child to move out of our line of sight. This is not failure, it is just part of our busy lives.

    This brings us to the next layer of protection, pool fences. Pool fences exist so that should a child escape a parent’s supervision, there is a barrier between the child and the pool. We know that children are drawn to water, but we don’t want them to be able to get to the water alone. Unfortunately, pool fences are only effective if they are used correctly EVERY time. Because many are not set up to be self-closing and self-latching, they allow for a high likelihood of human error. Even if they are self-closing and self-latching, if there is no regular maintenance, they can fail. Another aspect that is often highly underestimated is the intelligence of the children. A child needs only a chair or a small table to climb on to emulate opening the gate and/or climbing over pool fencing rendering even the best pool fence, useless.

    The fact that drowning is the leading cause of accidental death for children under the age of five is a grim testament to the fact that traditional approaches can, and do, fail. We exists so that, when other protective measures break down, your child can save himself.

  • Flotation devices give children a false sense of security and hold them in postures that are not compatible with swimming skills. If a child learns that he can jump in the water and go into a vertical posture and he will be able to breathe, he is getting the wrong idea about that environment. Flotation devices are for children who cannot swim. Children, who cannot swim, should not be allowed to learn that it is safe to play in the water while relying on a crutch. Life jackets must be worn in a boat or around water when there is the potential for a submersion as a result of an accident i.e. a boat collision or capsize; they are not a substitute for the ability to swim or for adult supervision.

  • ‘Dry Drowning’ is not a real medical term. If the child were to get water in their mouth and swallow some, the epiglottis, a flap of cartilage that lies behind the tongue in front of the entrance to the larynx, closes by a reflexive action over the tube leading to the lungs and prevents aspiration just as it does if they were drinking water from a cup or a bottle. The typical child’s anatomy is set up so that if the volume and/or speed of air/water entering the throat is denser than air, then the epiglottis, by default, will send it to the stomach and not to the lungs. The exception to this rule is if a person is unconscious at which point the involuntary reflex of breathing will take over. Every child is regularly monitored throughout lessons to ensure that they are not taking in water.

  • Our goal is that no child ever vomits. However, it does occasionally happen. Most often this is due to feeding issues. We ask parents to avoid feeding children for 1.5-2 hours prior to lessons because having food in the stomach while learning breath holding can cause discomfort. When a child is first learning to hold their breath, they will often swallow some air which can cause big burps. If a burp gets under food remaining in the tummy, it can cause vomiting.

  • In addition to educating infants and young children, we teach parents that there is “no substitute for adult supervision” and “No child is drown proof.” If a child needs to use their aquatic survival skills, it means that several other layers of defense have failed. The first goal is that the child is never able to access the water alone. These skills should be the last line of protection such that, if all other layers of protection fail, your child has a chance at helping themselves by using the survival skills they were taught.