Irene Madrid is grandma to seven and the co-founder of La Petite Baleen Swim Schools, located in the San Francisco Bay area. She believes that the swimming pool is more than just a place to learn to swim. It’s a perfect classroom for learning life skills. She also believes that there’s nothing more loving you can do for your children and grandchildren than to teach them to swim—using the teaching method she has developed over the past three decades.
Irene taught her three children and seven grandchildren to swim. She had them in the water when they were just weeks old. Besides her own family, she has taught over 6,000 babies/toddlers how to swim. Children can learn to enjoy the water as young as two months in the “Baby and Me” class. She suggests letting infants and toddlers sit on the shower floor and play with “special toys” while an adult showers. That way they get used to water splashing on them and in their eyes.
Irene has developed unique terminology for everything they teach. She describes swimming as “dealing with a suffocating liquid.” So the first thing they teach is how to breathe. Instead of teaching “blowing bubbles,” they teach children to make a “balloon face” by holding their breath with full cheeks. This not only allows them to hold their breath longer in the water, but also helps prevent painful water in the nose/sinus, as well as maintaining buoyancy. [Read Irene’s guest post on swimming safety]
And even though it’s the children who are learning, the parents are being taught important lessons too. In the curriculum Irene developed she and her staff help parents understand that love and discipline are two sides of a coin and that the most loving thing you can do for your child is to truly see who your child is—a new person everyday. The weekly 30-minute lessons help parents learn how to be in the present moment with their children by giving them their undivided attention.
Learning Emotional Skills
In addition to physical swimming skills, students learn emotional skills such as:
- Listening to and following directions
- Social interaction and teamwork
- Respect for oneself and others
- Overcoming obstacles and facing fears
- Learning how to react to success and failure
La Petite Baleen Swim Schools is a family business. Irene and her husband, John Kolbisen started the school in their own backyard in 1979. They had three children under the age of four and Irene did not want to leave the kids to go to work. She’d been swimming since she was four and grew up in a family that emphasized physical fitness. During college she studied child development and kinesiology, managed swim clubs, and coached swim teams. She was familiar with every aspect of the sport so it seemed like a natural step to take. Irene’s two daughters and their husbands manage the three schools in Half Moon Bay, San Bruno and San Francisco, and her grandchildren model for the school’s photos.
The school’s philosophy is to make learning fun by capturing children’s imaginations, and in turn creating happy, successful swimmers. They’ve developed a glossary of terms such as “Wiggle Butts” and “Dolphin Dancing” that conjure strong images in the minds of swimming children. They encourage progression by awarding different color ribbons as children master different skills.
Benefits of Swimming
Some of the benefits of swimming are:
- Builds the immune system
- Provides cardiovascular work out
- Increases lung capacity (especially for children with asthma)
- Strengthens muscles
- Improves coordination
- Teaches balance
- Helps bonding with caregiver
- Provides opportunity for face-to-face contact
Irene describes swimming as the “fountain of youth.” She swims laps five days a week. But not at her pool—it’s too warm for laps! On a recent family vacation Irene got kudos from her grandchildren for doing ten back flips off a rope swing at a water park. Their multi-generational family vacations usually include water and swim lessons. When her son was 16 months old, he swam in the ocean in Hawaii. A crowd of onlookers was so fascinated, Irene ended up showing them how to submerge a baby in the water.
In May, La Petite Baleen offers a swim safety program to help families prepare for new aquatic challenges on vacation.
