Glendy’s Water Babies

Original review, right after we finished lessons: If you have a young child, you should sign up for swim lessons with Glendy! (I think she also teaches kids of all ages and adults.) The lessons we took weren’t the splash around, play games, and sing songs kind of swim lessons. They were survival swimming, so that if my child fell into water and nobody was there to rescue him immediately, he would know enough to stay alive. My 2 year old took 5 consecutive days of 30 minute private lessons, and by the second day he knew how to roll to his back and kick until he found the side of the pool. It’s amazing how quickly even very young kids can learn these skills. And it’s definitely a skill every child needs. These lessons are a little more expensive than others, but they are private, intense, and effective. So they are worth it.
Update: Glendy uses a teaching method that may work well for some, but created psychological trauma for my kid. My son loved the pool and was fearless, which made we worried about him not really being able to swim. So I signed him up for the week of classes that were designed to teach a young child how to survive falling into the water. I was warned that watching would be difficult, and it was. As my child screamed and cried while being lifted over her head and dropped head first into the water, I cried a little too (hiding, so he wouldn’t see mommy upset). By the end of the week, he supposedly had learned the skills and was able to show me that he could roll over and float after being dropped into the water. Except that a few weeks later at the neighborhood pool when he fell in, he wasn’t able to roll over and float (I was right behind him, so he wasn’t in danger), so the hard-​won skills didn’t stick. And then when we signed up for regular swim lessons, I realized the full extent of the damage that had been done. My child would not go anywhere in the water with an instructor. He was terrified, shaking, screaming and crying. No matter how many times I explained that this teacher wouldn’t do the things Glendy had done, he was just too scared. (This didn’t happen anywhere else like MDO, just the pool.) It took about 18 months of private weekly swim lessons and then finding FINS before he would trust another adult in the pool. Thankfully, he now loves the pool again and is joining the swim team this year. Bottom line — if your kid doesn’t get upset when dropped/​dunked in the pool, then Glendy’s lessons would probably be great. Otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend them.