We all want what’s best for our children – well we’re here to tell you that swimming really is the best thing! Teaching babies to swim as young as 2-3 months has enormous benefits to not only their physical health, but their emotional health and intellectual capabilities also. Scientific studies performed to show the effects of baby swim lessons have found that babies that were taught from the beginning, compared to those that were not, had clearly better skills in the areas of motor control and balance, among other things.

First, there are the visible effects. While exercise is always healthy for developing humans, swimming provides an extra element (quite literally!). Because there is less resistance and the addition of buoyancy, babies can learn balance and physical strength throughout the body without the need for danger. They are able to learn how to control their movement freely and with low impact, and studies have even shown water babies to have an advantage with grip ability in contrast to non-water babies. Enhancing these capabilities early on like this will keep them a step ahead in their development.

Then there are the less obvious results; increased memory capacity, brain development and better social skills to name a few! Since memory has been linked to exercise due to those who exercise more possessing a larger hippocampus (area of the brain important to memory), it makes perfect sense that giving your baby full body exercise in the water will increase their capacity for memory development. As for the rest of the brain, because of the full-body movement nature of swimming, more connections between the left and right brain are made, and all areas of the brain function during swimming. As a result, there is faster communication within the brain, and by extension the child’s learning abilities speed up also! As for social skills, a study has demonstrated that children that learn to swim early on have better independence and confidence, which would in turn make them more adept to social environments. In addition, if they received lessons in a group, then they are learning to use their bodies and minds with others, watching each other and experiencing this development socially.

Again, there is more to swimming than meets the eye. Due to the immersive resistance water provides, babies are able to get a more neurological sense of their bodies, gaining further sense of how to move and a fuller grasp of their exterior.

After all these benefits there’s only the obvious left to state, and that is the simple fact that earlier swimming lessons will reduce the risk of a child drowning, by up to 88%! If the above hasn’t convinced you by now then this should. Infant deaths around water are still unfortunately high, and we don’t always have the means to prevent accidental deaths, but in this case we can. Et your baby into swimming lessons as soon as you can to give them a happier, healthier chance at life.

Written by: Maggie Stuurstraat