Making Waves www.makingwavesswimming.co.uk

We enrolled my son, who is four, in a Making waves class just after his birthday. neither my wife or I are good swimmers and we want our children to learn to swim as early as possible.

Friends were sending their son to this group and so we enrolled too.

The class is held in a school pool and is split into 4 groups, one being for young children with no experience. They spent the first months building up their confidence in the water, getting them to hold their breathe and not be afraid to put their heads under the water or get splashed in the face. I wondered why they weren't actually being shown who to swim at first but realised this must be their technique. After a few months they introduced them to kicking and when that was mastered then the arm movements were introduced.

My son can now swim a breadth of the pool unaided and is totally fearless in the pool. I don't think he'll ever reach Olympic standards but he's about as good as his mum is already and not far behind me and he's still a few months away from his fifth birthday.

The staff are really friendly, his 'teacher' is quite a young man but he's got a brilliant rapport with the youngsters and is able to make them listen to him which is more than I can do half the time.

The lessons are short, about 40 minutes once a week, but any longer and they get tired to be fair. The lessons cost £48 for 7 weeks so they aren't cheap but on the whole we are very pleased with the results. We've 2 more children coming after and intend to enrol them too.