When It's Time to Float

When we moved to coastal North Carolina a few summers ago, I put my kids in survival swim lessons. Now that we live so close to the water, the stakes are just too high for them not to know how to save themselves.

Lessons are 15 minutes a day Monday through Friday for at least three weeks, or until the child can pass a survival test while fully clothed. The goal is for the techniques to become muscle memory so in the event of a real-life incident, their skills would automatically kick in.

One of the first things they teach you is how to float on your back. If you are vertical in the water, you will sink faster. Floating requires much less effort and energy than attempting to tread water and allows time to rest and breathe. It’s sustainable for minutes, which can be the difference between life and death when every second matters.

Floating is the default position. Children are taught that if you want to be picked up, it must be from a float. When they panic in the water or start to flail, the instructor quickly and intuitively flips them onto their backs to float.

Through the course of training, it becomes second nature to roll over and float.

You get tired from swimming? You roll over to your back and float until you can catch your breath.

Get disoriented in the pool? Go to your float to rest, then regroup.

The thing about floating, though, is that you have to be still. And you have to breathe. You can’t move around a lot, or you’ll splash water onto your face or start to sink. You can’t hold your breath or you won’t be able to push your belly toward the sky and stay on top of the water.

But if you stay calm, breathe, and use the sequence of swim, float, swim you’ve been taught, you can make it to the edge of the pool and pull yourself out.

This isn’t really about swimming, friends.

Sometimes we all need to roll over and float.

When life’s waters get too overwhelming and choppy and we feel like we are being swept away in the current.

When we’re exhausted from treading water and not making any forward progress.

When it feels like we’re drowning.

Give yourself a chance to rest.

Breathe.

Be still.

Stay calm, roll over, and float.