Good and bad.
Full disclosure my family used our school's…read morecharter funds to sign up our (then) 5 yr old for first time swim lessons. My child had zero experience swimming or being in a pool. I thought this would be a great way to use our funds and teach him pool safety.
Fast forward to today, my son has since turned 7 this year, and he still does not know how to swim or even put his head under the water. Granted, we were not going consistently. But for the past 3 months we have taken him weekly. Before that we did 2 other months I believe.
I thought, let's just keep trying, maybe it's just that he's scared and he'll learn if we stick it out.
My child struggles with sensory issues and has not been interested in getting his face wet. He also has a harder time being around other kids in very close proximity which, he definitely is here. He did the group lessons for 30 mins and they're basically shoulder to shoulder most of the time.
So, the good: when he first started he really liked the two different teachers that worked w/him. The class was usually just him and one other child. The location is clean, and the staff seemed friendly. My son also mostly enjoyed the time and being in the pool, so it was good for getting more experience around other kids, teachers and being in a new environment.
The negative: the teachers rotate so you never know who you're going to get. So one teacher might know where your kid is at, but then a new person comes in the next week and it's like starting all over. It seems hard to build a comfortable relationship with the teachers because of this as well. Also, my son never progressed much at all.
He moved to the larger pool this year and it's been 3 kids to 1 teacher. recently, however, there were 4 kids in the class. I timed it on my phone out of curiosity- to see exactly how much 1:1 time he got during that class.
4 mins and 9 seconds. Total.
The class moved like a conveyor belt just shuffling the kids around, I couldn't believe the kids were getting less than 5 mins each with the teacher. The time in between their turn, they're just holding on to the edge of the pool waiting.
My son felt very cramped and two other kids were being kids and having fun but disrupting the class, so the teacher's attention was mainly spent on telling them to stop doing what they were doing. My son was frustrated and felt like he wasted his time. He also had safety concerns because the kids were practically on top of him at times and kicking and splashing in his personal space, so I don't blame him. He's already afraid as it is. Today we went back and there were 4 kids again. He just didn't want to do it again. The kids seem to be on a hamster wheel. The teachers, though friendly, simply don't have adequate time to actually teach the kids anything solid. It's like busy work. I also had a strange phone conversation with the owner recently. to be frank, she kept trying to rush me off the phone and I kept having to say "oh, wait sorry" (nicely) because i had more than one question but she seemed bothered with me. She also didn't explain about making up a certain day and how many days I had to reschedule when my kid got sick. You only get one make up class for the whole year which seems odd to me. We already missed two classes due to vacation (1 planned reschedule) and sickness (she apparently gave us 7 days from the date of the class to reschedule but didn't actually communicate that to me- I found out from the girls at the front desk AFTER the fact and the 7 days passed, which was frustrating because I would have brought him in. I guess I was supposed to assume what she meant when she asked "what does he have??" As in asking what illness he had. I said idk, a cold I think? But wasn't sure. So she "made a note" on her end but never specified that I had to come in within 7 days to make it up. Which really was just a courtesy reschedule because they don't even offer that. So, oh well.
Honestly though, even beyond all this, I could see and feel the judgement when I mentioned today that my kid was more easily overwhelmed and we would maybe look into one on one classes for the future. I got the impression that there was very little understanding or empathy there for my child, and my family and I felt brushed off.
Bottom line, just not for us. 4 kids is too many for one pool. 4 mins is not enough time to give each kid when you're paying for 30. Maybe one on one classes are different, or with smaller groups, but I had too many incidents where I brought up a concern and felt dismissed. In the future we'll be going elsewhere but I'm bummed we went for so long with really not much to show for it. At the very least my kid got a little more comfortable being in the water but for paying about $400-$500 total and like 4-5 months of weekly classes? I would not say this was worth that time or money unfortunately.
