Baby Afraid Of Water Or Parents / Carer, Which Is It?

Baby Afraid Of Water: Importance of Making The Carer Feel Safe

The "baby afraid of water" label is just not that simple!

If your default position is that it's always the Baby afraid of water, then you are more often than not going to have trouble settling a child into your lessons.

Your default should be that the parent or carer is you first concern. Because more often than not if you have a calm secure adult in charge of a of an infant then you have a calm confident infant.

This is not universally true of course; nothing is. But is a good rule of thumb.

Social Referencing

A good swim teacher will concentrate on making sure that the adult is looked after and made to feel safe and comfortable.

The technical term is called social referencing and it is basically where the child looks to the adult carer for security and hence they will react to however the adult reacts.

To know more about social referencing and how it affects you teaching, click on the link above and it will take you to a whole article on it.

Enjoy
   Richard