Eli was jumping off the diving board at age 2, but after a three-week break from swimming lessons, he screamed through an entire class and acted as if the water had become a stranger.
“It’s like he completely forgot what he was doing once he got in the water; he wouldn’t do what he was supposed to do,” his mother, Lizabeth, told The Epoch Times. By the second or third week, he was back to jumping off the diving board, but the regression shook her.
Their story should alert parents everywhere. Experts call it “swim skill hibernation,” an element of swim safety that parents might overlook. Children who take breaks from swimming can lose skills, muscle memory, endurance, and confidence that may put them at a higher risk of drowning, the leading cause of injury-related death for children younger than 5. The younger the child, the greater the risk of drowning, with a rate twice as high for those aged 1 to 4.
The Line Dance You Can’t Afford to Forget
Swim skill hibernation is akin to line dancing, according to Dr. Molly O’Shea, pediatrician for Goldfish Swim School. You might rush to the dance floor for a familiar song at a wedding, but it sometimes takes a sequence or two before the choreography comes back fully.
“The problem with water safety is that drowning happens in a matter of seconds,” she told The Epoch Times. “You don’t have the luxury of a whole verse of a song to get those movements back in swing.”
Children are taught—until it becomes automatic—to rise to the surface, roll onto their backs, begin to float, grab the edge of the pool, and call for help whenever they fall into water. That’s why continuous swim lessons that reinforce the basics are so important, O’Shea said.
When muscle memory fades during a break, so does the automaticity that makes it lifesaving. That’s why taking even a week off can matter so much. Formal swimming lessons were associated with an 88 percent reduction in the risk of drowning among children aged 1 to 4, according to a landmark study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
“If we could reduce the rate of any other life-threatening condition or accident by 88 percent, you would have everyone do it,” O’Shea said.
The Gaps That Put Children at Greater Risk
Swim skill hibernation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. For many children, it compounds existing barriers— economic, geographic, and cultural—that limit access to consistent lessons in the first place.
That means that young children aren’t the only ones at risk—so are teenagers who didn’t have childhood swim lessons or access to swimming.
“Kids who live in areas that don’t have pools or their economic differences create a lack of opportunity to take swim lessons, those disparities result in higher drowning rates,” O’Shea said. “Regardless of age … until you’ve got that automatic capability to move into a safety pose in the water, you’re at risk.”
A study published in Sports found that consistent swimming improves ability over time, and that children whose parents swim—and encourage swimming—tend to be more competent in the water. Teenagers who missed out on childhood lessons are not exempt from the risk, either.
Another factor is parental fears and attitudes around swimming. The study in Swim notes that parents’ swimming ability and tendency to encourage their children to swim are associated with more competent, more frequent young swimmers.
Lizabeth never learned to swim and was afraid of the water, but that’s what motivated her to sign up all three of her children for swim lessons.
The decision has already proved its worth. On three separate occasions, one son or another fell into water and rescued himself—turning to float or reaching the pool’s edge—before she could even reach them.
Her own childhood memory still haunts her. Lizabeth was playing a game in a friend’s pool in fourth grade when she lost her footing in an area of the pool where she could only touch the bottom with tiptoes.
“We’re all having a good time, until I lost my grip and I couldn’t pull myself up,” she said. “I’ll never forget the owner of the pool reached down, grabbed my arm, yanked me, and pulled me over to the edge. I couldn’t save myself.”
Without the reinforced training of swim lessons, Lizabeth’s mind was too overwhelmed with panic to think critically. Muscle memory—similar to what allows us to hop on a bike and pedal after months of not doing so—might be all you can rely on while drowning. Safety skills must be so ingrained in the brain’s neural pathways that even trauma won’t interfere with action.
What Parents Can Do
Despite the power of continued swimming lessons, O’Shea said, there are other safety measures parents should take.
Have a visual of your children in the water even when a lifeguard is present, she said.
“Always be with your kids—until they are really awesome swimmers—when they’re in the water, being within arm’s length of them,” she said.
Other safety tips include:
- Install fencing and lockable gates around your pool.
- Consider door alarms in your home to alert you if a child is leaving the house.
- Use Coast Guard-approved life jackets if your kids aren’t strong swimmers or don’t have water safety skills.
- Don’t rely on pool noodles or unapproved devices to protect your children. O’Shea noted that they can often tip and trap children underwater, putting them at higher risk of drowning.
- Empty and turn portable pools over after use.
- Remove toys from pools of all sizes.
The last tip is especially important for children who are neurodivergent, impulsive, or are attracted to sensory experiences.
“Why would kids who’ve been told 10 billion times by their parents, ‘Don’t go near the water?’ do these things?” O’Shea said. “Kids want to please their parents, but you’ve got this wildly appealing, attractive, sensory, and gorgeous thing drawing their attention—including the visual attraction of the water itself—and it can override the rules. They’re not trying to be defiant.”
It underscores the fact that it’s best to begin training as early as possible—even before children can walk or wander toward water.
O’Shea recommends acclimating babies as young as 4 months to water with parent-child classes. For older children who’ve known swim safety skills from years past, she said, a refresher class can be a good idea—especially if they haven’t swum in months.
“You could spend a lot of time in the water, but if you’re not actually practicing those specific swim safety skills, you aren’t going to maintain those specific skills,” she said.