I’ve been teaching baby classes for some time now, and while I like to make the curriculum full of bonding and tender approaches and songs and all that, I’ve also been focusing on parental safety more. Meaning I get some shocking looks when I tell my mommies and daddies we’re now going to practice treading in the deep end while holding our babies.
Okay. Back up. I don’t shock them that much. I build up to it. After the units (meaning individual families) have learned back floating techniques and are truly understanding floatation properties, we give a focus to their treading.
Treading is the art of combining “egg beaters” on the lower body/legs and “sculling” with the upper/arms. In this case, treading becomes just lower body movement as parents must use their hands to lightly support a floating child either on their back or tummy down.
To get a good tread started, I’d begin in about four feet of water. I get a lot of parents saying, “It’s too shallow!” You want shallow. Because a good treading position almost looks like you are sitting in a seat. In fact, the longer you extend your legs/body, the quicker you are going to sink.
So in our “sitting” position, begin by rotating your lower legs at the knee joint drawing circles with the heel. You can have righty move in first and lefty follow. You can have them move in together at the same time. Your body mechanics will straighten out the best coordination. But start out moving the feet inward. That equates to going clockwise for lefty and counter-clockwise for rightly (what I’m saying above is that you don’t both have to be at 3 o’clock at the same time).
You might be asking, What am I supposed to be doing with my child here? Hello! I have a baby in my arms! My answer is stop trying to hold your baby so close to you or out of the water. One of the top reasons a baby cries in the water is that mom or dad has held them too close to their body heat and thus refrained from getting the baby used to the actual temp of the water. All of us experience a 50-80% totally body weight loss due to buoyancy, so work with it: Lower your child to their chin and support lightly with your hand under their tummy (or head/back, if they are doing a back float). If you try to lift your child out of the water, you will submerge yourself. So get your baby used to the temp and floating.
The hard part about treading is that it is hard. The good part about treading is that you can get better real fast with a minimum amount of practice. That piece of information should inspire you enough to stick with it. Begin with keeping your feet up for 10 seconds. Then move on to 15. And so on. Look, if you can keep your mouth out of the water and at surface, you are a success.
Treading is great for building defined quads. It is even better for saving lives. You have to ask yourself as a parent, What would I do if I found myself in deep water with my baby? It’s what I ask my units in my baby classes. And that’s why we work on treading in the deep end.
squidkid. 