To overcome inevitable parental bias, a core group of 176 three, four and five-year-old children w involved in a more intensive assessment process using internationally approved testing methods. On average these children were:
Lead researcher Professor Robyn Jorgensen said the results indicated children who swam had an advantage over non-swimming children when starting school.
"What it says to us as researchers is that children under five who participate in swimming have a lot more gains in their motor development, their cognition, their language development, their mathematical reasoning than the normal population," she said.
"So what swimming is doing is adding different types of capital to these children that's going to help in their transitioning to school."
Participation in formal swimming lessons was associated with an 88% reduction in the risk of drowning in the 1- to 4-year-old children
Read the study here:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/381058
Approximately 4,000 unintentional drowning deaths occur annually in the United States, and demographic disparities exist.
Compared with unintentional drowning death rates in 2019 (pre–COVID-19 pandemic), rates were significantly higher during 2020, 2021, and 2022, with highest rates among children aged 1–4 years, non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native persons, and non-Hispanic Black or African American persons. National survey data revealed that 55% of U.S. adults have never taken a swimming lesson, and swimming lesson participation differed by demographic characteristics.
World Health Organization (WHO) recommends basic swim skills and water safety
training programmes for children aged 6 years or
older in high-, low- and middle-income countries. They give a
Strong recommendation.
Following publication of the Global report on drowning in 2014 there has been increased recognition of the impact of drowning on communities around the world. This in turn has led to WHO providing further guidance on implementation of drowning
prevention programmes and undertaking the production of this guideline.
Negative prior aquatic experiences can lead to fear which presents as water phobic behavior which influences ability to learn-to-swim. Findings indicate negative prior aquatic experiences persist across age groups; boys, children attending public schools and those with a pre-existing medical condition were more likely to report a negative prior aquatic experience; and that negative prior aquatic experiences adversely influence a child’s ability to learn aquatic competencies, resulting in a lower average level achieved when compared to children of the same age who did not report a negative prior aquatic experience.
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