Navigating swimming lessons is a confusing and expensive task on the parental to-do list | Canada Voices

We live in rural Ontario so teaching our kids to swim is a priority.

But for many parents, navigating swimming lessons feels a lot like planning summer camps: Where should we send our kids? At what age does it make sense? How much is this going to cost? And can we even snag a spot?

Just like summer camps, there are various swimming lesson options at vastly different price points, and navigating that can be confusing for parents. The most affordable typically are city-run lessons, which range in price depending on the number of lessons, the age of the child and where you live.

The City of Toronto, for example, charges $54 for a 10-week beginner program for ages six months to six years old, and $108 for a 10-week preschool program for children ages three to five. Given that price point, these swim lessons sell out quickly.

If you can’t get a spot in a city-run program, local YMCA or community centres also typically offer group classes at an affordable price point. For example in Prince Edward County, Ont., where we live, swimming lessons at a local community centre range from $80 to $110 for eight weeks of 30-minute group lessons.

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“Community centre pools and the YMCA tend to have the lowest cost per session, but a family will tend to have to enroll in more sessions for their children to make progress given the larger number of students per class,” said Diana Goodwin, the founder of AquaMobile, an app that acts as a directory of private instructors who come to your pool. “It’s also a race to sign up and many families are left with no spots.”

Some of these community centres will also offer one-on-one lessons for a higher fee. At our local centre, it’s $22 for a private 30-minute lesson.

We placed our daughter in these lessons when she was two but the pool water was absolutely frigid and she cried so much that we stopped going.

If you don’t want to visit a public pool or community centre, you can hire a private instructor either in your own pool or someone else’s. This can be quite expensive, For example swim school AquaTots, which has several locations in Canada, charges between $91 and $102 for a private 30-minute lesson, plus a $45 annual registration fee per child.

We don’t have a pool, so we teamed up with a few fellow daycare parents who did have one and agreed to split the cost of the lessons. The private instructor charged $45 for a private weekly 30-minute lesson, and $70 for two kids for 30 minutes ($35 each).

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You can find an instructor through your parent network, like we did, or by searching online. You could also use a company such as AquaMobile.

AquaMobile charges for an instructor’s time, so parents can split the costs with other parents. The more kids, the cheaper the lesson; their lessons are typically about $80 an hour, most commonly split amongst four kids – so $20 per child.

I heard from several parents that it can not only be difficult to find a private instructor, but their experience level varies, which means the comfort level of the child, and the progress they make, also varies widely.

After trying both a community centre and private lessons, our daughter was more comfortable in the water, but she still didn’t know how to swim without a floatie. (Ms. Goodwin says they recommend 10 lessons over the course of a swim season, and to budget for a minimum of three years.)

Parents I spoke to said the more kids are exposed to water, whether through formal lessons or otherwise, the more they’ll thrive. Suggestions included visiting open swim times at local community centres, exposing kids to water in the summer when possible, and/or sending them to summer camps that include swimming lessons in their programming.

Our children, meanwhile, are making progress thanks to their exposure to water on an extended family trip to Colombia. Our hope is that when we come back to Canada, they’ll be ready to swim without their floaties this summer.

Erin Bury is the co-founder and CEO of online estate planning platform Willful.co. She lives in rural Ontario with her husband and two young children.