Should you teach your autistic child to swim?

As far back as I can remember my family has always gone swimming. It was ether at a lake, a community pool, my grandmother’s apartment complex, the beach in California, almost anywhere. My siblings and I always had a blast, and we never tired of it.

During the summer it was our thing to do, what I didn't realize is it never cost anything. Yeah it would cost the money it took to pay for gas to drive there, or maybe the money for sandwiches while we were there (most of the time we had a huge bowl or grapes and cherry's to eat by the pool), but honestly, that's not very much.

So swimming is a cheap form or entertainment. It's also a great form of exercise. What's better than kids getting outside and expelling load of energy, especially with all the digital distractions we have today.

OK, so now we have a cheap, good source of exercise, and it gets me off the couch also, so that can't be bad. Then we have the "life skill" aspect. I don't know anyone who does not know how to swim, or at the very least, no one has ever told me they don't know how to swim. I want my son to know how to swim, even if it's only doggy paddle. I think this is something he will need to know.

So last year my wife got one of the small pop-up pools. The pool isn't very big, about four feet high, and 12 feet around, and we sent it up. He loves it, and everyone else likes to have fun in it. We set it up again this year, and we have used it a few times, but he hasn't learned to swim yet, and I don't expect him to for a while.

The little guy hasn't learned to swim ether, but that's OK, I didn't learn to actually swim until I was about 6 myself. The little guy is our water baby; the big guy on the other hand will always do what he wants. There have been times we've had to get out because the big guy has decided he was done swimming after only a half hour. The thing that worries me about the big guy is he has gone under before, and I don't want that to scare him out of anything to do with water.

When he goes under, and it has only been for a second, he does not want to have anything to do with the pool anymore. I know it's scary for a regular child, but for an autistic it must be horrifying. It takes so long to get him to want to go back in the pool after going under, even days later, so I just let him work it through, and he usually comes around and wants to have fun more than he fears going under water again.

So I will go slowly at teaching him how to swim and the little guy as well. Though I do want him to know, I'll let him learn in his own time. Once he does learn, I think we will go up to a larger size pool, till then, we will stay with the 4 footer.

Would you teach your autistic child to swim? How would you go about it?