How we teach our children to swim themselves

I can't say that I've formulated concrete educational goals that I'm consistently working towards. Rather, I have the feeling that I am constantly improvising on the basis of certain basic values. But I always had a clear goal: I wanted each of my five children to be able to swim before they started school. At least seahorse, rather the bronze sign, because strictly speaking the seahorse does not mean that you can swim, but knows how to help yourself.

Maybe I'm a little paranoid on the subject because I once had a swimming accident as a child, because one of my daughters fell off a jetty as a toddler while wrestling and sank into the lake or simply because a fortune teller had read out of my hand at a fairground and gloomily prophesied that I should avoid big waters.

Since then, I've been dreaming of the "Titanic" from time to time. But what is nonsense, on the "Titanic" even the lifeguard badge in gold would not have saved you, especially not when women like Rose take up so much space on the flotsam.

But regardless of my watery paranoia, there are good reasons not to rely on the fact that the children will learn to swim at school. The number of bathing accidents and reports of a lack of basic knowledge of swimming are frightening every year. (My colleague Hanna Zobel has written down here for you what parents should consider after falling into the water.)

I am convinced that we parents are the worse teachers in many areas because they are more impatient and unprofessional. Swimming is probably one of them. But you have to be able to afford paid courses, they are often fully booked or at least often not feasible for working or multi-child parents.

So you wet yourself. I had also learned to swim from my father, who, by the way, taught it to my mother in the lake of our village – as an adult. So it's never too late. Anyone can copy a few basics via YouTube or tutorials. And then just get started. Those orange water wings? Omission, completely unnatural arm position, rather obstructive for swimming movements. Children don't learn to swim first, but to dive – breathing is then added. Self-awareness with buoyancy is encouraging: So I always come up again first (of course, this does not apply to toddlers who sink like a stone because of the heavy skull). Experiencing that you can practically lie on the water with minimal effort even has something magical and conveys the most important rule anyway: keep calm, even if you choke. It is not the next wave that is the biggest opponent, but one's own panic. Ideally, start with footwork, for example at the edge of the pelvis, then with a board or noodle. The most important thing? It has to be fun, playful, then raise the requirements, work on the technology. And no matter how well they swim, we want to lose our fear of the water, but we never want to lose respect. Lifetime.

I invested a lot of time during our holidays to get all five of them swimming, each at their own pace. In principle, rather incidentally, when playing in the water. We are now proceeding to the exam this weekend with the last candidate. The little five-year-old pool prince had actually taken the longest time of all, for a long time he was neither lured nor motivated nor bribed. Which is okay.

So I was all the more surprised that after our last swimming trip last weekend, he said: "Now I want to." And as if he still wanted to prove it, he has been enumerating the most important bathing rules about four times a day for a week now: the one with the thunderstorm (leaving the water immediately) impresses him the most and he understands the one with the stomach (neither too full nor too empty) the least. He likes to eat, even at the lake or in the swimming pool. His ideal would be to float on his back and balance a bowl of currywurst with red and white fries on his stomach and stare at the sky. He can't do anything about his genes. I assured him that he could do it, later, so much later. Seahorse with currywurst is not possible, but currywurst after the seahorse test: promised!

I don't want to put any pressure on you to be able to swim before school. The coordination of arms and legs and breathing is only possible at a certain level of maturity – and everyone has their own pace, their talents and their goals. Screaming parents at the edge of the pool are probably as effective as the method of my best friend's father: He once literally threw him into the deep end and shouted "Swim or die!". I have nothing against goals or challenges that make you grow, even for children. But I'm afraid that what really broke down or died was trust in his father.

Tragically, my best friend's father died very young, my boyfriend was only eight years old and he grew up with three sisters and his single mother. False or missing role models as a father are a topic of my generation, which is looking for successful fatherhood. We had a very moving story on our homepage this week about what it does to a child, a teenager, when a parent, in this case the father, dies unexpectedly – and things remain unsaid. Nothing that makes you happy, but a real reading tip: "I would have liked to tell him that he was a great father."

My reading tips

Our columnist Julius Fischer is also facing a challenge as a father: his parental leave is over, at least the nominal, state-funded one – and strangely enough, this is often taken as a leading index for the commitment of parents, especially fathers. Under the really very pretty heading "Just box the sofa", Julius wonders what he should do first "afterwards". I really like his answer to that: being a dad. (By the way, he wrote about his fear of the first swimming lesson with a baby here.)

When will it get right again... Autumn?

The summer was great. And long. Almost frightening in its extremes. We used it for swimming. Nominally, it is now the beginning of autumn, but in many places it still felt like summer. Here in Berlin, the Brandenburg Gate was sprayed orange by the »Last Generation«. I cycled past it on my way to the office where SPIEGEL organized a major climate conference this week: Its course, results and controversies are still worth reading. Perhaps also in view of the upcoming autumn holidays and our travel decisions, if you can and want to afford one at all. Staying at home can also be nice, I had spent my holidays as a child in the tent camp, at the lake and on the football field. In Berlin, for example, 2500 free places in swimming courses will be offered during these autumn holidays. A great idea. You don't have that in your home? Then propose this, organize pressure on local or other politics together with other parents, get loud, get involved. There are many ideas that are worth fighting for. Do good and talk about it, is an old saying. There is already enough bad news. We promote civic engagement with our "Social Design Award" and ask you, our readers, to have a say in who should receive the well-endowed prize this time: Click here for the ideas and the vote!

The Last Judgement

I admit, I'm a sausage guy, my advertising for currywurst in this newsletter is in stark contradiction to climate goals and animal welfare. However, since good currywurst is usually defined by the sauce, the vegetarian substitute is usually not a problem here. I'm going to test this this weekend after the swim test with my youngest. If you are still looking for a new recipe: Nothing burns with our cooking columnist, you can cook the summer again, so to speak. Or explore the ideal ramen conditions with Sebastian Maas's recipes, which are always readable and inexpensive: Because autumn time is soup time.

My moment

For me, this weekend marks the beginning of a new chapter in my life: I hang up my lifeguard trunks and swap them for comfortable swim shorts, let myself drift more (in the water) in the future and look forward to the currywurst afterwards with Junior.

It is precisely these many small and big moments, the beautiful and sad ones, that make our lives so valuable. Over the past weeks and months, you have enriched us with countless, very open and very touching stories and impressions from your life. We think about how we can bundle all this positive energy in a meaningful way for all of us. And ask for your advice, your suggestions: Do we want to get to know each other even better and join forces for family policy ideas and demands – organize a family congress comparable to the climate congress? A second-hand exchange, a bulletin board for interesting family appointments across the country, consultations with experts? Send us your ideas, your wishes and your own stories to: familie@spiegel.de

Yours sincerely,

Markus Deggerich