When you’re raising a child with special needs, learning to swim represents yet another challenge, but one that must be overcome. That’s why at Swim Fit Alaska Swim School we’re proud to offer special needs swim instructors and special needs swim lessons. We hope that with our help students can move past their personal obstacles to learn to swim, improve their confidence, better their fitness, and learn more about water safety.

All autistic children should learn to swim, children with autism are drawn into the water, and rates of drowning are very high. In fact 91% of all wandering deaths for autistic children are because of drowning. We want to change that with our swim lessons for autistic children. Autistic children see, feel and understand things in a different way, which makes teaching them to swim an entirely new challenge. However, our autism swimming instructors have experience with kids on the spectrum, and understand the best techniques to help your child learn to swim and be safe around the water. Of course every child with autism is different, but our instructors have a wide range of experience, and know how to use child-centered methods and flexible teaching to make the special needs swimming lessons work for you. Our talented special needs swim instructors can even provide visual supports, like visual skill cards, to help children on the spectrum to process and understand the swim skills before they practice them.

For many children with special needs, autism or otherwise, swimming can be a very therapeutic pastime. For autistic children water can be calming on sensory overloads, and in children with physical disabilities the water provides a weightless environment that is often very freeing. Special needs swim lessons unlock the benefits and enjoyment of water for those children, giving them a new lease on life.