Taking the children to the seaside

A sandy beach provides the perfect playground for young children. They can build fanciful sand-castles with moats, turrets and drawbridges cover their bodies with the warm sand and by gentle paddling and playing at the water's edge get used to the sight, sound and feel of the sea.

Water turns us all into children — you've only got to look at fully-grown men and women splashing each other, laughing, ducking and diving into oncoming waves to see what we mean.

It's wonderful to watch the reactions of a young child seeing the sea for the first time. Almost invariably he will spontaneously run to the wet and shining sand at the water's edge and start to play with this lovely new material — drawing canals in the sand with his fingers or a stick, busily building dams, totally lost to the world around him.

The code for grown-ups on the beach is not to leave young children unsupervised even for a minute, but equally not to interfere with them unless they are in danger. Leave them to make friends with the sea in their own way, to let the water run through their hands, gently lap round their ankles, or sit by the water's edge shouting with delight if a particularly long wave wets them.

Don't instill fear of the sea into your child; it may create barriers in his mind which will make it difficult for him to learn to swim later. Equally, never force a child, whatever his age, into the water against his will. Most children's tears at the seaside are caused by adults trying to make them do something they don't want to do or interrupting an absorbing game.

Children will soon discover for themselves how lovely it is to move about in water, and the time will come when they will want to learn to swim The first requirement is to learn to trust the sea and to make relaxed movements in it. It's no good trying to teach a child synchronized movements of arms and legs until he has lost his fear of the water.

He will soon lose his fear of holding his breath under water, in fact a lot of young boys are keen to almost before they learn to swim. Yes, he'll swallow a certain amount of sea water as he learns, but no harm is done by that.

Let your child get the feel of the water under and around him by standing in shallow water and holding him in the water with your hands under his tummy so that he is secure. Let him splash about, moving his arms and kicking as rhythmically as you can get him to. Slowly withdraw your hands to see if he is supporting himself, but be ready to hold him again if he needs you. Alternatively, in a calm and shallow sea, let the child lie on his back with your arms supporting him; hold him until he has learnt to relax completely, "letting himself go" which will make him float. Proper movements can then be taught — by you if you are a good swimmer but otherwise professionally, so that the child does not get into bad habits which are then hard to correct.

All sorts of aids are available to help children to learn to trust themselves to the water — rubber rings, inflatable jackets and inflatable arm bands. Never think that if your child is supported by a ring or a jacket you can relax your vigilance for a minute. The sea has many moods; there are treacherous currents, and the under-tow can easily pull a child away from the shore in minutes. Fatal accidents have happened all too often, particularly involving rubber mattresses that have floated out to sea or punctured.

Always buy the best aids you can get and make sure that jackets are made up of a number of separate air chambers, so that if one gets accidentally punctured the others will not let the water in.

But some fears and dangers are exaggerated. A common fear with young or inexperienced swimmers is the horror of being touched by anything under water, particulary seaweed or underwater plants in a lake.

It's an almost primeval horror of being caught by some mysterious green twining liana which will wind itself round the swimmer's legs. The only danger is that the inexperienced swimmer may panic at the touch of something strange — the plants and weeds are quite harmless.

Treat the sea with a healthy respect, learn about currents and watch the tide like a hawk. Never let your children swim in a rough sea or in very cold water, and once they can swim don't let them swim out to sea; they may find it harder to swim back than they realized. Get them to swim in line with the shore and, whenever possible, go in with them. Cramp can easily set in and so can panic. Don't let a child dive until he has been taught the proper technique. It's all too easy for him to injure himself, particularly if the water is too shallow.

Swimming is fun, a wonderful sport and a very real security measure. All parents should make sure that their children are taught properly at an early age. It may one day save their lives, or enable them to save someone else's — at the very least it should give them a lot of pleasure whenever they are by the seaside.