A great safety skill you can teach to your child is the back roll. Most of the time, swim instructors like to teach the back float but learning to roll has greater implications for safety in the water.
The funny thing with this skill is that the first step is just to do it with no explanation! Give the child or adult a simple cue such as "poke the sky with your chin when you roll". Obviously, they'll mess it up the first few times but the point is that you're teaching the back float within the skill of rolling. You're killing 2 birds with 1 stone.
This is what they need learn if they get stuck in a pool. If they understand the roll then they understand the back float. If they understand the back float, then they understand rudimentary treading. It's not a progression in that order but it makes sense that controlling the chin is the key to each of these safety skills. Alot of the skill with swimming comes with relaxing the body and making minor adjustments to head movement.
This gives you a world of options to create without any prior knowledge as to what to say. You can reinforce the backroll with the task of looking through a ring toy at the clouds while they're on their back. Skills are always better taught when an open-ended task can be integrated into the teaching.
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