Praise Effort, Not Intelligence With Kids & Do it Through Swimming

One of my all-time favorite generational writers, Po Bronson, penned a New York Magazine article this Spring about the power (and peril) of praising your kids, titled “How Not to Talk To Your Kids.”

To quickly paraphrase, studies show that praising and/or labeling your kids using intelligent-defining terms such as ’smart’ can cause underperformance, meaning the child begins to feel pressured to drop tasks they cannot immediately excel at for fear it will challenge their intelligent status. The optimal praise phrase or word for expressing a child’s success should be ‘good effort.’

The article is worth a read because of an interesting study conducted by a Carol Dweck, a Columbia psychologist, that showed kids who receive the praise word ‘effort’ try to take on harder tasks:

Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”

Why just a single line of praise? “We wanted to see how sensitive children were,” Dweck explained. “We had a hunch that one line might be enough to see an effect.”

Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out.

I find myself complimenting kids on their swimming ‘effort’ a lot, but I’m not telling myself I have some super-natural way to instinctual detect the newest teaching methods. It’s simply easier to enforce the effort word in swimming because athletic tasks take more displays of physical action and the praise term is a typical word that comes to mind. The take-away here would be perhaps to think about the different words you use to praise when it comes to physical and mental accomplishments.

Swim Safety Tests Disguised As Games: Weeding Out Weaknesses

One of the biggest complaints I get from parents is the fact their kid will listen and practice swim skills with me, but will not with them. So if your child can swim but you want them to practice more, or you’re just curious how strong and smart they really are in the water, using games disguised as water safety assessment tests is fun and satisfying way for you both to get what you want.

Safety Game #1: Chase Toys Until Tired

When 5-year old Aimee’s* mom told me Aimee’s summer goal was to be able to go to the day-camp pool with just counselors and a lifeguard on duty, but no mom-supervision, I knew I needed to give Aimee a dose of a real-life pool scenario. The pool would be full of fun and games and objects and friends, and I wanted to figure what she would do if she put safety second and let distractions literally take her away.

One of the best ways to figure out a child’s limits — and what they do when they are faced with them — is to throw an object they are attracted to, like a noodle or ball, into the middle of the pool and tell them to bring it back. The more difficult or numerous the objects, the more energy and time they exhaust trying to reel them in. Desire begins to compete with ability, and that’s your test in action.

I have used this safety test many times since its invention, standing outside the pool and watching. A goal would be if they can bring in two volleyball-sized balls plus a tennis ball all at once. Believe me, figuring out how to haul in all that gear can have you chasing the objects around for a long time. Plus, they must prove they can turn over on their back whenever scared or tired or just because.

Additional Swim Safety Tests or “Games” to assess skills:

• #2: Diving for rings. Toss a set of sinkable toys for your kids to retrieve. I use this to check and see if they have a strong kick, can bob, hold a breath for long periods. This also serves as a great lesson about how well a body floats, as it is very difficult to reach the bottom.
• #3: Jumping in from the side & swimming back without assistant. How far they jump tells you how comfortable they are. Every kid should be able to climb out of a pool.
• #4: Treading for 20 Questions. I modify this by asking a kid as many questions as I can think of (ie. your favorite color? Best friend?) while we swim with our heads up. The idea is to tread for 1:30 minutes without assistance.
• #5: “Peanut Butter & Jelly.” This imitates a swim-float-swim sequence. Explain to your child their belly is “jelly” and their back, peanut butter. Now as they swim to you with “peanut butter up” (belly down), with your hand underwater where they can see it turn from palm down to palm up indicating it is time to turn to “jelly” or roll over onto the back. Repeat for yards or side-to-side.

Do you have any safety games to share? What are they?

Mother of Three Rescues Stranger From Shark

The following article is from The Sydney Morning Herald out of Australia:

A MOTHER of three was hailed a hero  after risking her life to rescue a stranger from a shark.

A  white pointer up to five metres  long attacked schoolteacher Jason Cull, 37,  while he was swimming with dolphins at Middleton Beach, in front of the Albany Surf Life Saving Club at 7.20am yesterday [May 10, 2008].

Joanne Lucas, 50, who was on the beach after arriving early for  surfboat rowing practice, dived into the water after hearing Mr Cull’s screams for help. “I just saw someone thrashing in the water and saying ‘Help me, help me,’ th” she said.

“I thought it was just a dolphin [in the water] but someone else was screaming,  `He has been attacked,’  so I raced down there.”

Mrs Lucas swam 80 metres offshore to retrieve Mr Cull as the shark,  one of several sighted off the beach,  circled. “Just before I got to him he said, ‘It’s got my leg.’ I grabbed him and swam back to shore.”

She found “great big chunks” missing from one of his legs.

Great Southern Region Surf  Life Saving support services co-ordinator Tom Marron praised Mrs Lucas’s “act of incredible bravery”.

“She heard him shout out for help and dived in with no regard for her own safety,” he said.

“He suffered a fair bite. If she hadn’t followed her instinct, or had been a bit later, then the bloke could have bled to death or been dragged out by the shark. What she did was brilliant.”

Mrs Lucas told Mr Marron: “I’d always wondered what I’d do in that situation, and now I know.”

Mr Cull was treated by surf club members on the beach, given first aid and oxygen, and taken by St John Ambulance to Albany Regional Hospital, where he underwent surgery on his left leg.

Beaches were closed from Middleton Beach to Emu Point, three kilometres away.

An Albany Sea Rescue plane reported two more  sharks in the vicinity, and lifesavers used inflatable craft in an attempt  to track the sharks and herd them back into open water.

Efforts were called off late in the afternoon after rain and cloud made it impossible to spot the sharks from the air.

Local residents said shark attacks were extremely rare in the region and they  believed the sharks might  have been attracted close to shore by a school of fish.

Mrs Lucas manages Camp Quaranup, a 20-minute drive from Albany. She was being comforted by friends and family last night.

Grant Turner, the senior ranger in charge of the Albany district, said she should receive a bravery award.

“Someone should nominate her for a medal,” Mr Turner said from the beach, where he was directing operations in conjunction with other rescue services.

He described Mrs Lucas as being “physically tiny but very fit and very strong”, adding: “Everyone has so much admiration for her bravery.”

Mr Turner said beaches would remain closed until the rangers were satisfied that the sharks had left the area.

“The planes will go up again in the moring to see if they can sight the sharks,” he said.

The Leader, the Follower & the Supporter: Deciding Roles in Swim Lessons

This is a touchy subject, or I could just feel this way because I highly value the importance of having control. I think it is a personality thing.

Regardless, it sounds about right to expect a teacher to play the role of Leader, but since swim lessons involve at least 3 people — a teacher, a parent, and a student — confusion over who plays what and how to execute your responsibilities can be an issue and struggle.

Let’s say you’ve got a dynamic of all participants having a history of being headstrong (but in the most positive way, of course): an aggressive swim student, a very involved parent, and an extremely experienced swim instructor.

In this scenerio, the Leader is the instructor; the Supporter is the parent, and the Follower is the child.

Okay, so now you’ve got a fearful swim student, a parent who witnessed the child almost drown, and a newly-trained swim instructor.

The Leader is the instructor; the Supporter is the parent, and the Follower is the child. For any situation, the line up always falls this way. Period.

It is important everyone in the triangle understand their role so expectations can be lived up to. It is also important to realize the amount of control hasn’t been taken away from anyone, just cleverly reassigned in a way that allows everyone to work together much better.

• The Leader: The assigned and expected expert, the teacher, is the Leader. No matter if the instructor is new to working with kids or just your kid or a complete know-it-all, the Leader is the one the position needing specific information so they can get the job done. The Leader is very dependent upon the Supporter to be able to find their way through their job.

• The Supporter: The parent is the Supporter. The Supporter grants the Leader the okay to create a swimming experience and relationship with their child. The Supporter delivers vital factual evidence about their child’s swim history, both good and bad, but keeps subjectivity at bay. The Supporter handles discipline issues. The Supporter’s magic wand is using words of encouragement to steer through tough times, no matter who the words are for (including themselves). Their support and information is vital to to the success of the Leader and the Follower.

• The Follower: The Follower is the child. They are here because the Supporter said they need to be. The Follower is there to try, despite fears, tears, the word no, and unique learning styles. All Followers have one universal goal that makes them equal: Learn how to be safe in the water.

Change assigned roles, and you create dysfunction. This is not to say a parent cannot teach their child to swim; but if you’re a parent and you’re doing Leader behavior, you aren’t ready to hire a swim instructor. A child might need explaining before a lesson how to be a Follower. And if a teacher cannot take the reigns despite encouragement from the Supporter, the Leader’s abilities need to be addressed to the Bigger Leader, or their supervisor (in a supportive way by the Supporter, of course).

It sounds brash, but that’s because I think this kind of truth-telling is either a shock to the control system, or it simply hurts your pride. But it also whips all roles into shape and cranks out success.

What do you think? Do you think it is appropriate to address this issue to a parent this way?

Learning the Ropes of Swim Lessons: The Best of SquidKid

Are you new to the world of obtaining swim lessons for your family? And even though it is early May, are you ready to pull your hair out in confusion and frustration? Securing swim lessons in the summer is a very competitive business. Based on the feedback I get, which comes from hundreds of moms and dads and nannies and grandparents, they can tell you it can be quite a process, from finding (and sticking with) the right swim instructor to figuring out exactly when your child really is water safe.

Never fear, instruction is here! I’ve written about entires perfect for families new to the swim lesson process — I will save you tons of time (and money) with The Best Entires About Learning the Ropes of Swim Lessons:

• Could you be jumping the gun, or is your child to young to start swim lessons? You’ll need to learn about the pro’s & con’s of starting your child early in Part One. Be sure to follow up with Part Two.
• Don’t panic if they are age 5 and cannot swim! This is a great age to learn to swim and the most cost-efficient. Visit this post to find out how you can get your 5 year-old to start swimming in one lesson.
• How to prepare a fearful child with swimming lessons. Here is what you should know to break the fear. Also, make sure you know the difference between water fears and water trauma.
• Stop tearing your hair out and figure out how to beat the swim crowd. Know how the instructor and swim program cycle works. And don’t wait until summer — the “off-season” is a great time to take lessons, and my very first post tells you for many reasons.
• Do-it-yourself ideas. Here is a review of a swim book I recommend for teaching babies, as well as Level Cards — you’ll be able to assess where your child is at using Red Cross Safety Standards. Man, I should charge for these cards!

A Different Kind of Ab: Abalone Diving

I recently returned from the Mendocino Coast from an abalone diving trip. Hunting for the marine mollusk is best described as dangerous, expensive, time-consuming, and highly regulated by the laws. But that is what makes the entire experience, from diving to preparing it for eating, completely exotic. I am actually working on a story assignment about the trip for The Christian Science Monitor, an international newspaper on par with The New York Times.

We had excellent weather conditions, but the north Pacific Ocean is very temperamental. Swimming in the ocean is a very different type of swimming. Here are ocean swimming pointers:

• Never turn your back to the ocean. Low tide switches to high tide in the blink of an eye, and along with it the size, frequency and powerfulness of the waves.
• If caught in a riptide or similar current, swim parallel to the shore. Don’t try and fight a current, you’ll get tired and lose.
• Swim under waves. Take a big breath and duck.
• Never swim alone. No one should ever swim alone, anytime, for any reason.
• The ocean is always in control. Work around its conditions.

Could You Be Working Out Your Abs Without Knowing It? More on The Abs Diet

If you’ve been following my posts on the New York Times Best Seller, The Abs Power Diet for Women, you know we’ve talked about the ABS DIET POWER, a clever acronym to remember the foods to eat (ie. A = Almonds or W = Whey) or to just stay away from fake foods (when you can’t remember anything). We know The Abs Diet promotes 6 smaller meals a day and a focus on working muscles, as in more fuel and more muscle equals less flab.

What’s great to hear is the author Zinczenko beings his ab exercise formula by first starting and stressing the importance of working a very large muscle group in your body, which happen to be your legs, not your abs.

Most of your body’s muscles are found below your belly button, writes Zinczenko. Working these leg muscles “triggers the release of hormones that stimulate muscle growth throughout your body, kick your fat-burners into overdrive, and give you that thin-as-a-dime stomach you want.”

He goes on to share a Norwegian study where people who focused on lower-body work actually gained more upper body strength than a group who spent the majority of their time on upper-body exercises.

Who would have thunk. But that is great news for use water-lovers because most water workouts are 85% lower body, especially when it comes to water aerobics.

So much of what we think makes sense in health and fitness — drink 8 classes of water a day, always stretch before working out — well, some of it proves to be false. I remember one of my water aerobic instructors telling me when she started 20 years ago, she used plastic milk jugs filled with water as weights; in our field, we now understand the properties of using floating Styrofoam weights and working muscles opposite than you would on land due the laws of gravity, or the laws of buoyancy .

New or corrected studies and information is what makes fitness so interesting, and working out in the water is definitely cutting edge. Another interesting unknown I have for you is that you might not know an entire water aerobics class can be all about abs. Because 85% of the water workout is legs, and The Abs Diet just shared with us that working our leg muscles in various exercises stimulates muscle growth throughout our bodies.

It’s not about doing 1,000 crunches on land to get great abs. The headlining news is that getting great abs is really about having a holistic look at your body, from what you put into it to your posture to the exercise regime you choose. Think outside of the box.

What Swim Instructors Talk About at the Water Cooler

One of the best ways for a swim instructor and/or swim program to increase their reputation is to get together and swap teaching notes. When you have a more knowledgeable staff, you offer a more desirable service. Although every teacher’s method and personality is different, it’s important that swim instructors share the same “wave” length because ultimately swimming is a life-saving skill.

We sort of touched on that vital fact last night at a swim instructor meeting. We were deep in discussion about our new Swim Skill Levels that I shared with you. Atually, we were more like bickering about small stuff. Like whether or not a child’s kicks should be corrected in Level 2 or not until Level 3, or when the butterfly should be introduced.

One of our great JCC instructors, Alex, interrupted the conversation and in a new tone of voice said: “You know, what we do is huge. We are teaching kids how to be safe in the water. Think about that. Teaching swimming is teaching a life-saving skill.”

We did think about that. I feel a great sense of responsibility for what I am doing.

Swimming in huge. Earlier, Alex had shared a memory when he was a little boy where he almost witnessed a good friend drown in front of his parents and parent’s friends. It was a pool party, and all the adult’s backs were to the pool. Alex watched his friend quietly jump in the water and could only see the top of his head bobbing. Alex shyly poked the kids’ father and told him their son was in the pool and we wasn’t sure if that was okay.

When I was a kid, I remember swimming in a huge, 50-meter public pool and a kid jumping on top of me and holding my down for fun. The kid didn’t mean to scare me, but he did, and no matter my protesting he continued to play rough with me so I had to kick and push to get away. I wrote about why it is okay to do this here. I had to have been about 9 years old.

Another instructor, Kathy, has a scar on her chin where she jumped from the side of the pool and hit the edge. Tami, our Splash! teacher of 20-plus years, remembers her story. And Casey hers. And Kim. We remember our own personal water trauma experiences. (I wrote about the different between water trauma and water fears here.)

Swimming is a memorable experience. The best thing we can do as parents and instructors is for everyone to be on the same page and reinforce the same messages to our kids about the importance of being safe in the water.

Book Review: Water Babies & Safe Starts in Swimming

I’m not crazy about the book selection out there on teaching swimming to any age level. Most read like an insurance manual, as swimming can be very technical.

For babies, swimming needs to be approached with the perfect balance of comfort and concern, and the book Water Babies & Safe Starts in Swimming by Francoise Barbira Freedman is able to capture this particular spirit through vivid pictures accompanied by a digestible amount of text. This magazine-sized book gets it right with colorful image examples, photo captions, bullet points, and sidebar boxes.

Where to begin? That’s what every instructor asks his/herself when teaching a class fun of babies for the first time. The authors, essentially a trio of credentialed infant and swim specialists, start off the book with three important concepts:

• How feeling happy and secure is the foundation of swimming, from the minute you and your baby enter the pool until you both step out.
• The benefits of early swimming, which involves parents showing their own motivation for getting in water.
• Frequently asked questions, such as what exactly happens biologically when a baby goes underwater (fully submerged).

Water Babies explains water exploration fundamentals, such as floating, parental holding, cuing, submersion techniques, surfacing and rolling, and activities that lead to traveling (passing, rides on the back).

I’ve mentioned this book before. This is the only book I’ve ever used to create — no pun intended — crib notes for my classes. Instructors, and even parents who read this book, might question the order or progression. For example, in Water Babies, back floating is introduced before proper holds. But if you choose to flip around the teaching concepts to accommodate your learner, you won’t go wrong. Just remember the opening points about comfort coming first.

The only small detail that would make this book better is if the pages were laminated so you could bring it near the pool side.

Water Babies & Safe Starts in Swimming is recommended for parents, grandparents, and instructors.

Fitting Water Workouts into the Abs Diet For Women

To show off your abs, you have to flatten your belly, The Abs Diet author Zinczenko writes. To flatten your belly, you have to burn fat. To burn fat, you have to build muscle.

The Abs Diet workout focuses on strength training (3x a week); cardiovascular exercise (1 tougher interval such as jogging and 2 light ones such as walking); and ab exercises (2x a week). Swimming laps would fit into the definition of a tougher cardio.

The plan focuses on using strength training to increase your lean muscle mass as quickly and easily as possible. As I view the bulk of the exercises outlined in the book, I’m convinced with some slight modifications, all of the strength training exercises can be done in a water aerobics class or simply just in the water using regular weights, weight floats, resistance paddles, or webbed gloves. Especially due to the fact it is recommended the exercise method be done in short circuits (smaller repetitions or reps, one exercise after another) and in a compounded manner (working more that one muscle at a time), done with speed or intensity.

A good water aerobic class does this, and for one more important additional reason: This method keeps your interest. Add great music and you won’t even feel like you are exercising but dancing at a party.

If you have never taken a water aerobics class and are working on getting there, here are Three Things You Can Do Right Now to Build Your Abs:

1. Stand tall. I love this helpful image: Think of a cape flowing behind you.
2. Abs aren’t just in the front. Abs connect around your hips and to your backbone.
3. Abs have memory. Be conscious of the first two and you’ll develop awareness. Awareness leads to habit.

We previously found the right food (using the acronym ABS DIET POWER) and eating pattern (6 small meals). Here’s the formula for success:

MORE FOOD + MORE MUSCLE = LESS FLAB

And on the other hand, consider the formula for failure:

LESS FOOD + LESS MUSCLE = MORE FLAB