A swim coach once told me: If your child lives on an island, she ought to learn to swim. Before you nod approvingly at how this piece of seemingly sagely aphorism deserves a place on an inspirational Instagram post, preferably with a sunset silhouette of father-and-daughter duo frolicking at the beach, let me explain why it makes no sense at all.
Sure, I was also initially persuaded by his logic. After all, Singapore is an island. We’re surrounded by the South China Sea. Therefore, my daughter, Jenny, should learn to swim.
Right?
Right… except, of course, when there’s a tsunami.
Let’s be honest: swimming lessons aren’t going to save a non-buoyant Jenny, armed with two Peppa Pig floaties, from the wrath of a 20-foot tsunami wall. In fact, the safest thing for her to do would be to stay out of the water altogether. And to further improve Jenny’s chances of survival, she might also consider travelling further inland, away from our coastal beaches. Perhaps towards heartland Sengkang, where the largest body of water that might threaten any child is the collective syrup sloshing about in the 6,000-or-so boba tea franchises across the northeast region.
But no, don’t let the flawed logic of one trite and smarmy instructor dissuade you from enrolling your kids into swim school. There are many other very sound and good reasons why parents should send their children for swimming lessons: the obvious health and fitness benefits of swimming as a sport; Schooling-inspired dreams of Olympic glory; or just the fact that your slightly pudgy and terribly hyperactive child has consumed far too many boba beverages and will need to participate in a high-intensity activity to expend all that Sengkang sugary buzz.
If you’re still not convinced, here’s the mother of all reasons to send your kids into the swimming pool – it is the one place on earth where they cannot play Roblox. They will have no choice but to leave their devices in the safe, dry confines of the giant parasol where their parents are waiting for them leisurely, while chewing iced-cold diabetic boba.
For all these reasons and more, I was sold on the importance of water survival skills for young Jenny, and she has been taking swimming lessons for slightly over a year. I’m also pleased to report that Jenny is now a swimmer, though not of the Olympic variety. Her swimming style has less to do with slicing gracefully across the water in record time, than it does with, say, a clumsy cannonball. More precisely, 21 successively clumsy cannonballs, for that is the number of inelegant pool plops she needs to achieve before she will climb out of the pool reluctantly for a shower.
But Jenny didn’t immediately take to the water like artillery ammunition. Like most kids, she was perfectly pleased to just waddle in the shallow pool where only her shins were fully submerged. She wouldn’t put her head in the water, she wouldn’t get into a deep pool where her feet didn’t feel the comforting assurance of the pool floor, and god forbid we should make her try anything remotely akin to actually swimming while in a swimming pool (paddling, kicking, wetting her hair, that sort of thing).
Fast-forward 12 months later and she’s since overcome all those fears and can navigate the pool with splashy aplomb. I’m not entirely sure what changed along the way. What was the trigger that transformed Jenny from a crybaby to a water-baby? How did she eventually grow comfortable enough to lumber across the pool swimming laps?
If I had to guess, I would have to give the lion’s share of the credit to Jenny’s swimming instructors who were patient, kind, gentle, patient and supportive…. Did I also mention that they were patient? Because Olympic-level patience is really the secret sauce when it comes to teaching kids to swim.
Parents, no matter how adept they might be in the pool or how much they love their offspring, lack that same godly forbearance, and are thus unable to be effective trainers to their own children.
This is true when it comes to imparting any sort of technical skill to your own kids. But probably more so for an activity like swimming, where a terrible and irrational impulse to drown a tiny human being is not just common but also really convenient.
Jenny’s swimming instructors are all very experienced and have had the proper training to deal with wailing, water-averse children. On top of that, I suspect their efficacy is also built on the knowledge that they only have to deal with them for an hour or so.
Unlike parents who are genetically bound to love them for the rest of their lives, these instructors know that they only have to muster the equanimity they need for those critical 60 minutes. After which, they get to return the child to her rightful parents, thus relieving themselves of any urge to forcibly submerge their under-aged clients.
In other words, they do what they do so well precisely because they don’t love these kids enough to drown them.
I Am Jenny's Father 
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