Looking To Boost Your Baby’s Brain Power? Start Swim Lessons Now!

22 Oct Looking To Boost Your Baby’s Brain Power? Start Swim Lessons Now!

Do early swimming lessons give kids the best start?

From Mercatornet

If you ever considered getting swim lessons for your infant or child, this new study will give you an even better reason to do so.  The study, which encompassed children from Australia, New Zealand and the United States, suggests that early swimmers gain a developmental advantage over non-swimmers.  This post from Mercatornet outlines some important aspects of the study, and presents parents who are on the fence about getting their child swim lessons some interesting food for thought.

Here is an excerpt from the post:

The research also found significant differences between the swimming cohort and non-swimmers regardless of socio-economic background. While the two higher socio-economic groups performed better than the lower two in testing, the four SES groups all performed better than the normal population.

Professor Jorgensen says that in addition to achieving physical milestones faster, children also did better in visual-motor skills such as cutting paper, drawing lines and shapes, in colouring in and in many mathematically-related tasks. Their oral expression was also more advanced, along with higher performance in the general areas of literacy and numeracy. “Many of these skills are highly valuable in other learning environments and will be of considerable benefit for young children as they transition into pre-schools and school,” Professor Jorgensen said.

One of the main movers behind the research study, swimming coach Lawrie Lawrence, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s The World Today radio program that he approached Griffith University because he was convinced from his experience over 35 years teaching kids to swim that the benefits extended well beyond swimming. He explained:

Babies come into this world with billions of neurons and they need stimulation because that’s how they learn. They learn by sight, sound, taste, touch, smell,” he said. “Now water is the perfect medium to stimulate the senses because as you immerse a baby in the water it covers their whole body and as you move the children through the water they experience different sensations. Plus the parents are there to communicate and talk so it’s the perfect medium.

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