I'd say this is pretty controversial considering every swim coach on planet earth has probably done the same thing over and over again with swim safety training! What I'm saying is that you shouldn't get your kid swim safety training. Sound pretty stupid right? Allow me to explain.
Teaching safety skills is certainly integral to a child's aquatic foundation but I propose another solution. Teach your child everything about putting their face in the water. THAT IS IT!! The reason I say this is because ultimately you want your child to learn fear management rather than arbitrary safety skills. Ditch the back floats. Ditch the wall crawls. And for crying out loud, ditch the underwater swimming and dive training. The latter 2 things are useless on so many levels that I don't have the patience to talk about currently.
If they learn how to put their face in the water, it opens the door for experimentation. Ideally, you want the child to develop their own motor patterns in swimming based on the belief that the water is SAFE. You can teach all the safety skills you want but if they don't understand how to trust the water, it'll never work. Think about it this way. If they ever fell into a pool, what do you think would happen if they felt like they couldn't put their face in the water? Their fear would compound in those next 20 seconds of struggle.
The moral of the story is that you should keep your eye out for an instructor that teaches STRATEGY. If they give your child OPTIONS on how to swim, fear can slowly disintegrate in each lesson.
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