Swimming with your baby or toddler can be an excellent bonding opportunity, helping to build trust and empathy through fun activities in the pool. There are also a range of fantastic health benefits that can be accrued through swimming from an early age.

Here are 5 reasons your children will be grateful you taught them to swim.

1. Physical Development

Swimming can help provide people of all ages with excellent physical exercise. Even just splashing about the pool can provide a fun, mini workout for the kids. Completing lengths can help regulate metabolism, tone muscles and improve the strength of heart and lungs. Swimming with the kids is the fun way to help your child’s physical development whilst getting a workout yourself at the same time.

2. Emotional Growth

As well as physical development, swimming can help children develop emotionally. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explain that swimming can help relieve anxiety in people of all ages and dramatically improve moods. The CDC notes that swimming can help battle depression in the long term.

Exercising releases endorphins through the body, helping stimulate the brain and putting the person at ease. Swimming is found to be more relaxing than other forms of exercise, resulting in lengthier workouts.

3. Improved Intelligence

The Griffith Institute for Educational Research discovered that children who swim regularly were able to demonstrate a higher level of cognitive function that non-swimmers. This means that swimming kids are generally brighter than the land-dwellers. The research project showed that swimming children were up to 15 months’ more developed academically and cognitively than non-swimming children.

This improved intelligence was found to manifest itself in a number of different manners such as numeracy, language, problem solving and following instructions.

4. Safety Training

Whilst there are a lot of benefits of introducing children to swimming from a young age, water still needs to be respected. The often slightly over-protective nature of parents can help instil a healthy respect for water and swimming in children, ensuring they spend their lives understanding the importance of acting in a safe manner around water.

As they grow older and start swimming without supervision, this instilled respect will help them understand their limitations in the water and the appropriate way to approach swimming – hopefully preventing them from plunging into dangerous waters.

At Splash About, we are dedicated to ensuring swimming children are safe at all times whilst enjoying the great benefits of water.

5. Managing Health Problems

Swimming can provide significant benefits for children with physical health and mental health problems.

Children with juvenile arthritis and other afflictions affecting the body’s joints can enjoy low impact exercise. Such children may not be able to participate in high impact sports and exercises such as football or running, so require alternatives to get sufficient exercise.

The CDC research also revealed that children with mental health problems can benefit from group swimming activities, helping them develop personal connections. Children with multiple disabilities can also enjoy the sensory stimulation provided by water they may not be able to enjoy in other environments.

If you are looking to introduce your kids to swimming, check out the Splash About baby range and the toddler range.