FAQ

Any more questions? Contact us and we’ll be happy to help. We would love to hear from you.
Table of Contents

Lessons & Development

We offer Private Lessons, Parent and Me, Swim Team Prep and Adult Lessons.

Yes, we do! All of our staff here are certified with a Special Abilities Training Certificate from the United States Swim School Association.

To register for a class, download our app from the App Store (Aqua Duks Swim School), create an account with us, and find a day and time that works best with your schedule. Once enrolled, you will pay for the classes as well as the registration fee.

This is a one time fee. Your child will receive a t-shirt, progress book, tote bag, and insurance while enrolled with us.

A written email must be sent to swim@aquaduks.com before the 1st of the month in order to withdraw from lessons. Once dropped, your spot may be taken and we cannot guarantee the spot once you return. We do not offer a refund for the remaining lessons if withdrawing halfway through the month but can leave a credit on the account once re-enrolling.

Cancellations: To cancel a lesson we require notice, via phone or email, the day of your child’s lesson. If your child’s lesson falls on a weekday, we must receive notice by 9 am and if your child’s lesson falls on a Saturday, we must receive notice by 8 am. Lessons canceled within the allotted time will be credited with a make-up. Each student will be allowed 2 late cancellations per calendar year. No Shows – Missed lessons with no prior notice will not be allowed a make-up class.

Make-Up Lessons:

  • Make-up lessons can be scheduled through the Aqua Duks app. Make-ups cannot be scheduled over the phone or in person. Makeups are scheduled in addition to your regularly recurring weekly lesson.
  • Make-up lessons cannot be credited towards monthly tuition.
  • Students must be actively enrolled to schedule make-up lessons.
  • Make-up lessons expire after one year from the date of cancellation.

Our Private Lessons are offered to students 3 months and up. The private lesson will accelerate the learning process and allows our instructors cater the class to the individual age, comfort, and skill level of each student.

Learning to float is learning to swim and is of utmost important for two reasons. First, it gives the child the ability to self-rescue in the event they fall into the pool or body of water. The second reason, which pertains more to the ability to swim, is that floating demonstrates an understanding of buoyancy and ability to control how to stay on the surface of the water. Controlling buoyancy is essential to learning to swim independently and efficiently, as all swimming really is, is using the arms and legs to propel oneself through the water while floating. Without the ability to float, controlled and sustained independent swimming is impossible and students will always rely on having the bottom to stand on, a person to hold them, a floatation device, or a wall to hold onto, to stay safe in the pool.

It is nearly impossible to predict the amount of time it takes for child to learn to swim as there are many factors that will determine how a child progresses. These factors include, but are not limited to, the age a child starts swimming lessons, the frequency and consistency in which a child attends lessons, the child comfort level in water which is directly related to the child’s sensory system and  spatial awareness, past experiences in water, and goals of the parents. As with any sport, learning to swim is a process, not an event, with an infinite amount improvement that can be made and knowledge that can be learned. We don’t typically ask, “how long does it take to learn to play football?” In learning to swim there is a basic guideline to the ages that certain skills can be accomplished, and if a student starts swimming as an infant is likely to follow this timeline outline below:

 

0-24 months: Breath control, back floating, and  the ability to “self-rescue” (rollover and float)

2 years – 3 Years: Independent swimming using coordinated movements of the arms and legs

3 years and up: Swimming strokes with proper technique

 
Again, this is a rough timeline of abilities based on age, some students can accomplish this skills earlier in life and for others it may take significantly longer. It is important to remember that with time and consistency every child can and will learn to swim comfortably.
Parent & Me lessons are designed to introduce your child to the water and to teach the basic skills of breath control and buoyancy. When the class starts to feel redundant or when you feel your child is no longer progressing or learning new skills, it is usually time to switch to private lessons. Our instructors are trained and use a variety of techniques to ensure your child will progress through our program and become happy independent swimmers.

There is no bad time to start taking swim lessons, however it is recommended to start as early as possible. We start our swimmers as young as 3 months old and find that our most successful students start at or around this age.

 

Why? For infants, the water is a familiar and comforting environment and we are born with natural reflexes and skills that enable us to deal with being in water. Starting swim lessons early in life helps to strengthen these reflexes and prevents the water from becoming an unfamiliar environment. With the frequent exposure to water and quality instruction, infants learn to swim the same way they learn to crawl and walk without experiencing the anxiety that often accompanies learning to swim at an older age.

 

In addition to ease of learning, infant swimming provides many other benefits that will stay with the students for a lifetime, these benefits include but are not limited to, increased safety in and around water, accelerated cognitive development, increased confidence, and  accelerated physical development.

Crying is normal during swim lessons for a variety of reasons. The most common causes of crying during or before lessons is separation anxiety and fear of the unknown.

 

Separation Anxiety – Separation anxiety is a perfectly normal phase of child development and is caused by an attachment that a child developes to mom and/or dad. When child is in the care of someone other than mom or dad they may experience anxiety resulting in worry, crying, or even tantrums. This reaction to working with a new swim instructor usually only last a few weeks while a trusting relationship and routine of the lesson are being developed.

 

We recommend parents show their child they have nothing to fear by either watching the lessons from a distance or from our viewing area. This allows the students to focus on and receive comfort from the instructor rather than mom or dad who are standing poolside. 

 

After a few lessons this anxiety dissipates and the child’s confidence and independence grows as a result. Working through separation anxiety rather than stopping lessons while aid in future situations where they may experience similar anxiety, like when they start preschool or kindergarten, stay with a babysitter, start team sports, ect.

 

Fear of the Unknown – It is a normal human instinct to fear what we do not know or understand, through communication and gaining knowledge we alleviate these fears. New students who have not yet developed the communication skills to talk their way through this anxiety will often communicate their fear by crying.

 

Our instructor are trained to work with our students to help them gain understanding and knowledge resulting in the alleviation of this fear. The result is increased confidence and a life lesson that will stay with them. Learning that with consistency and determination they can overcome situations that may seem scary or even impossible at first

For most of our students 20 minutes is the ideal lesson time. Being that our lessons are private, our students are being engaged and challenged for the entire 20 minutes. For most children this is about the length of heir attention span and physical ability.

If you compare this to a group lesson, usually 30 minutes and split between 3 to 6 children, each child is really only receiving 5 to 10 minutes of actual lesson time. Remember swimming is a physically strenuous activity and what we are working on is different than just playing in the water child which some children can do for hours.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as water-safe, as anyone, no matter of skill or comfort level can drown in water at any time. Learning to swim, having the proper safety precautions in place, and being prepared for an emergency by being trained in CPR will reduce and even prevent drowning, nothing can ever replace constant supervision from a designated adult while children are swimming.

We offer our Parent & Me class to students age 3 months to 24 months. This class offers an excellent bonding experience for parent and child, and will introduce the basics of breath control and buoyancy. Most students will learn to be comfortable in the water and holding their breath in the first few classes of Parent & Me. This class is recommended for new students 3 to 18 months. We recommend starting directly in to private lessons if your child is nearing the age of two for consistency purposes.

 

Our Private Lessons are offered to students 3 months and up. The private lesson will accelerate the learning process and allows our instructors cater the class to the individual age, comfort, and skill level of each student.

Facilities & Gear

We suggest that students only wear ear plugs if directed to do so by a physician. For most students, outer ear infections, or “swimmers ear”, is not an issue, especially if the pool water is well maintained. Your child is more like to contract an outer ear infection from bath water than from a well-maintained pool. As with goggles, it is important to for your child to get used to the sensation of water going in and out of the ears, as this is a part of learning to swim too.

We keep the temperature at 92 degrees year round. Our pools are kept at 1ppm chlorine, which is the minimum required by OC County Health Department. In addition to chlorine we use a UV disinfection system to ensure our pools are clean and safe.

All children should be wearing a bathing suit and if your child is under the age of 4, they are required to wear a Happy Nappy DUO. 

Goggles can be a great tool during swim lessons, however we believe that it is of utmost importance that all our students learn to swim and to perform all of the core skills in our program without goggles as well. Students can become dependent on goggles and will learn to swim only if they are wearing them.
We pride ourselves on the cleanliness of our facility and our water, for we can only keep our students safe if they have a safe and clean environment to swim in. Our pool runs on a 24 hours automated filtration and disinfection system. This automated system constantly monitors the chemical levels and disinfection potential of our water and adjusts as needed. This ensures our pool water is consistently balanced and avoids the highs and lows of chemical levels that plagues many pools with high bather load. In addition, our pool water is checked manually everyday and the chemical levels are displayed at the entry to the pool for the public to ensure peace of mind.