What is Clothing Week?
Each year, we host a clothing week where swimmers have their lessons while fully dressed.
Why Clothing Week?
Children can fall into a body of water at any moment. Sometimes this happens when no one is looking. We have heard multiple stories where a parent found their child in the pool with their clothes on, or turned their back for a moment and the child fell in. In fact, most child drowning victims are found with their clothes on.
One small thing—like having clothes on—can cause a child to panic and forget the basic skills they have learned in lessons. We practice safety skills with our swimmers, so they know the sensation of being in the water with clothes on. We want them to know that although it may feel strange to roll over or swim to the wall with clothes on, it is still something they can and should do when in the water.
If they ever find themselves in that situation—and we hope they never do—our goal with clothing week is that by practicing these skills we can help prevent panic in children and they can get themselves to safety.
Having this practice can help a child react quicker and prevent panic until someone can come to their rescue. A little bit of time can make a big difference in an emergency situation.
How to Prepare for Clothing Week:
- Have a swimsuit on under clothes. The first 10 minutes of lessons will be in clothes and will be focused on safety skills. Then kids can take clothes off and practice additional skills for the remainder of the lesson.
- Bring an extra plastic bag to put wet clothes in after the lesson.
- The heavier the clothing, the more the child will feel the weight of it. Think jeans, sweatshirts, tennis shoes or boots for maximum impact.
- Clothing week is for all swimmers but especially encouraged if your swimmer is in Parent Tot through Piranha level.
For the safety and health of other swimmers, please follow our diaper policy during clothing week. Just be mindful that when your child is at home in a regular disposable diaper, it is much heavier and not as buoyant when wet.
Our goal with clothing week is to practice safety skills with your child to help prevent panic in case they ever were to fall into a pool of water. We want swimmers to gain some experience with this while supervised, so they can react accordingly if they were ever in this situation at home.