|
Submerging
is an activity that is included in the baby swim concept at
many swim schools.
Swimming
under the water is an exciting and different way to meet the
world. To be able to move on your own gives a feeling of freedom.
To know how to manage a situation where you have accidentally
fallen into the water is an important skill. To be able to
do that you have to know how to hold your breath under the
water. For parents it is important to know that your child
can manage under the water.
Although
there are many advantages with teaching a child to hold it’s
breath under the water, it’s important to do it in the
proper way. There many ways of doing this - and many opinions.
I will now write about the way I do it, the way that makes
me feel I do a good job as a teacher and a doctor and taking
into consideration both the relationship between the child
and the parent and the relationship between water and the
child.
First:
The parent and the child need to feel good in the water environment.
This is the basis which all the other skills are built upon.
Then, gradually get the child used to having water over its
head and face. Pour a little water at a time over its head
and then check how the child reacts. Week after week you can
increase the amount of water if the child and the parent feel
it’s ok. When the child is used to the amount of a small
bucket of water over it’s face you can be sure that
the child has learned to hold it’s breath – and
still above the surface.
Many
have heard about the diving reflex. This is a confusing concept
that in fact consists of several reflexes. Their purpose is
to protect the airways and to save oxygen when under water.
It has been known for many years that water animals like seals,
dolphins and whales have a strong diving response and can
stay under the water for long periods although they breathe
with lungs. In the beginning of the 1980-ies a study was made
on baby swimming children that concluded that babies up to
6 month of age have a laryngeal diving reflex.
In
1999 I myself made a new study (Dr Ludmilla Rosengren, E Goksör
and Prof Wennergren) that concluded that this diving response
could be seen at least up to one year of age. (Bradycardic
response during submersion in infant swimming, Acta Paediatr
91: 307-312. 2002)
In
2002 I made another study to see what is actually eliciting
the diving reflex. The conclusion was that there are probably
two different facial reflexes and that one is stimulated by
water or blowing in the face and the other is a laryngeal
reflex stimulated through water around the epiglottis area
in the throat. These different reflexes can be difficult to
separate by only reading this description. The diving response
can be seen in children up to at least 2 years of age but
also in adults. Probably we have some diving response all
our lives but some reflexes become much weaker as we get older.
Summary: The reflexes are not important for baby swimming.
You cannot preserve the reflex by starting submerging at a
certain age. The reflex/reflexes will diminish in all cases.
The important thing is to teach the child how to hold its
breath voluntarily.
Read
more in the Baby swim book!
|
