There comes a time in every parent’s life when he has to teach his child to swim. And he has to do it in a way that won’t get him in trouble for child endangerment.

I mention this because I’m sending my son to a camp this summer where they won’t let him near the lake unless he can pass a deep-water test. And I want him near the lake, because generally, in all the weeks he’s there, he doesn’t otherwise shower.

And yes, I’ve been sending my kids to day camps for years, but despite what they claim, they don’t really teach the kids to swim. They’re not really there to teach. That’s why I think yeshivos should have pools. That, and the fact that most camps are in yeshivos.

So it falls to the parents, especially if you have a child who doesn’t really care to learn. Many kids don’t really see the need to swim these days. Yes, there was a need for swimming once upon a time, but nowadays, how often are you really in the middle of the water where you didn’t intentionally go in for a recreational activity that you had a choice about? There are also life jackets nowadays. In the old days, life jackets were made out of oak, and they weighed 200 lbs. You spent the entire time lying down on the floor of the boat, trying to breathe.

So I may have some kids who don’t want to learn to swim or think they know enough and don’t want to improve. I can tell they don’t really know how to swim, because when they go swimming, they refuse to get in the pool unless they have nose plugs. I’ve never worn nose plugs in my life.

You’ll put a crayon in your nose, but you draw the line at water? Have you ever seen a professional lifeguard use a nose plug? No, they hold their noses and swim with one hand.

So what I do is try to get a quiet, empty pool, where the kid can learn without all the splashing that comes with a crowded pool. Even though I learned to swim in a crowded day-camp pool with people splashing everywhere.

Yes, despite my parents’ occasional attempts to teach me, I taught myself to swim. For a really long time, I had step one down—dunking. I spent like four years practicing dunking. I used to have dunking contests with my friends, to see who could stay under for longer. The best part of the dunking contest is when you come up and your friend’s still down there, and you go back down and pretend you were down there the whole time. And then he does that. And you both keep doing that the entire swim session. I think this is why I didn’t get a whole lot of actual swimming done for several years.

I also knew how to do a dead man’s float, which is where you just float there, face down, which is not the optimal way to stay alive. So one day I was lying there, face down in the water, and I wondered, “What would happen if I just started paddling?” And suddenly I just started swimming! And people were like, “Hey! Get out of the way! We’re having dunking contests here!”

It was really crowded in the shallow end.

Point is, I know how to swim, but I don’t know that I can prepare my son, because I never really took any kind of deep-water test. I kind of just coasted under the radar until I got to an age where people just assumed I knew how to swim. I can actually stay afloat for a really long time, but I don’t know if it’s by anyone’s official testing standards.

But what I’m saying is that I have no idea how to teach a kid. I kind of hoped my kids would teach themselves.

So I’ve been reading up on techniques. For example, one thing experts say is that you should stand in water that’s a comfortable depth for you to hold your child in the correct position. Unfortunately, most pools have exactly two depths—knee depth and ocean depth—separated by an 85-degree slope that you cannot stand on, because it’s slippery when wet. And it’s always wet.

Another thing experts say is that you want to show your child, by example, that the water is not scary. For example, you can get in first and show them. Of course, the way that I get in—and I learned this from my father—is first I spend 20 minutes alternately getting used to the water and shrieking. (“Don’t splash me! Don’t splash me!”) So this might be a little counterproductive.

On the other hand, some people say—and this was a legitimate teaching technique for years—to just throw your child into the deep end. No one had time for drawn-out swimming lessons back then, because life was short. For reasons like this. But supposedly, the science was that his survival instincts would kick in, and he’d swim. Or the parent would jump in, after 20 minutes of getting used to the water, and save him. Or throw him a piece of oak.

“Bonk!”

But for a very long time, this method supposedly worked, the idea being that if you push your child into the water and he gets out himself, he’ll have the self-confidence to go out and live on his own, because there’s no way he’s going near you again.

But that’s kind of playing with dynamite, isn’t it? That’s kind of like teaching a child to drive by jumping out of the car while you’re speeding down the highway.

So maybe we should do some variation of this. Maybe, to start, you should throw another adult into the pool to demonstrate. Or at best, maybe throw something in that your child really treasures and have him jump in after it.

“There goes your phone!”

By Mordechai Schmutter

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He also has six books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].