Everyone knows exercise is good for children, but it can be easy to underestimate all the benefits of an activity like swimming on a young person’s development. It can help them in so many ways and we’re going to explore three of the main ones in this blog.
1. Good for your child’s physical development
What makes swimming different from most athletic pursuits is it’s low impact. This means, properly supervised, the youngest of toddlers can safely enjoy a workout in the water with extraordinary benefits for their physical development.
Swimming can help develop fine and gross motor skills from the earliest age. Gently building strong muscles and general levels of fitness.
As they grow, children will continue to benefit from the exercise with increased blood flow that is known to strengthen the heart and help with general physical development.
Swimming is also a brilliant way to steadily increase lung capacity. This is all down to the fact that the activity encourages your child to regulate their breathing pattern while they move through the water, exhaling as deeply as they inhale. This benefits them in two ways: it helps them feel calm and relaxed and it also reduces toxin levels in the body.
2. Good for your child’s mental development
Swimming has long been recommended by health bodies and associations across the world for the way it reduces anxiety and stress in children and leads to improved mental health. This, in small part, is down to the endorphins that are released by the body during exercise.
A few years back, there was a well-known and comprehensive scientific study conducted in Australia by the Griffith Institute for Educational Research. It discovered that children who learn to swim when they are younger show significantly better brain development than non-swimming peers.
“Lead researcher Professor Robyn Jorgensen declared...
”“While we expected the children to show better physical development and perhaps be more confident through swimming, the results in literacy and numeracy really shocked us,” declared lead researcher Professor Robyn Jorgensen.
See the figures from the study and we think you’ll agree that ‘shocking’ sums the findings up well. On average, these children were eleven months ahead of the normal population in Oral Expression, six months ahead in Mathematics Reasoning, two months ahead in Brief Reading, 17 months ahead in Story Recall and an incredible 30 months ahead in Understanding Directions. These results are truly extraordinary when you realise the average age of the children in the study was just 50 months.
Did you know that swimming has also been prescribed by the NHS to combat mental health and anxiety? Those endorphins we talked about earlier are known to combat the stress hormones that are released by the body, while the enhanced blood flow that occurs can help improve memory, mood and can also help children get a better night’s sleep.
3. Good for your child’s self-confidence
Swimming is fun. While some may think it’s an activity you do on your own, it can also be an excellent way to meet people who share similar interests. That’s as true for children as it is for adults.
Getting down to the local pool provides the perfect opportunity for your child to interact with other kids. These interactions are structured in the case of swimming lessons, and making friends is easier when you’re regularly spending time with the same children over the course of a few weeks. Of course, the more practice your child gets at developing their social skills, the better they’ll get at it.
New friendships aren’t the only way swimming can help build your child’s self-esteem. Jumping into the water, facing challenges, and overcoming fears are all valuable for raising their confidence. And being more confident will have a positive knock-on effect on their mental health.
As they learn and become stronger and more able in the water, your child will begin to feel a strong sense of achievement that helps make them more assured and outgoing. This blossoming process is wonderful to witness, and the impact often extends well beyond the pool: into the classroom, the playground, out onto the sports field and even back at home.
With so many other positives beyond the three we’re talked about here, swimming can play a key role in a child’s development. If yours hasn’t started to swim yet, then they’re really missing out. You can put that right by booking swimming lessons today.
When your child’s happy, it makes you happy too, so the chances are those lessons will be good for you too.
Booking lessons with Swimtime, the UK’s largest independent swim school, couldn’t be easier. There are plenty of courses to choose from and you’ll be able to quickly find your local pool and all the other details here.
