Blowing Nose Bubbles
“What is the proper breathing technique when swimming?”
Most of the time the goal is to take a large, fast breath through your mouth, hold your breath until you are ready to come up for air and then exhale air through your nose.
The only exception to this is “Bobbing” and “Breaststroke”. In those case you are only inhaling through the mouth and exhaling through the nose. No holding your breath.
There is no minimum age for children to be able to blow nose bubbles. I have had several children aged 2 and YOUNGER who could blow nose bubbles naturally.
So why do we teach children “O” bubbles? Because many children struggle with the concept of blowing their nose. Once they understand how to properly blow their nose they are ready to stop doing “O” bubbles and learn NOSE bubbles. That is the ultimate goal. There are plenty of students I never even bother teaching “O” bubbles to. We skip straight to nose bubbles.
I have learned in my many, many years of teaching hundreds - thousands of children how to swim, that there are many parents out there who do not realize they do not know how to teach their child how to blow their nose properly. I watch the parent put a tissue to their child’s nose and say “blow”. The child then blows out of their mouth as instructed. The parent cannot see this because the tissue is in the way. I have had children way too old who still cannot blow their nose. At some age we need to just get this skill mastered.
I have come up with this approach to teaching your child how to blow their nose and build up to nose bubbles at home. It works! And it saves swimming lesson time for working on skills we need a pool to learn. Why not save time and money and do this homework?!
Teach your child how to blow their nose when their nose is NOT stuffed up!
First show them how to take a deep breath in through the mouth, then exhale through their nose. THAT is what you mean when you tell them to blow into a tissue. When you feel like they are doing it then move on to the next step.
Put a tissue in front of their nose and watch them blow in to the tissue from the SIDE, not from right in front of them. You can’t see what they are doing with a tissue in front of their face.
Bowl of water on the table
When they can blow air out of their nose put a glass bowl of water on the table. Sit across from them. Put a sinky toy into the bowl.
Have them look UP at you. Show them how to take a deep breath.
Then have them look down into the bowl and exhale from their nose. Tell them to “make waves” in the water to their toy. We do NOT want them to put their face in the water. They are not ready for that yet. They may get confused and smell the water and get water in their nose.
We want them using their neck to look up to take breaths, and look down to blow air onto the surface of the water.
If they are getting confused between inhaling and exhaling through their nose:
find something they like to smell: flowers, perfume, freshly baked food, etc. Tell them to smell that, NOT the water. They INHALE the smell. They blow out to make bubbles.
Show them how to blow bubbles out of a straw. They cannot drink through the straw when blowing bubbles. Their nose is like the straw. They won’t get water up their nose if they are blowing out of their nose. PHYSICS!
Once they understand the concept of blowing air out of their nose it is time for them to slowly get their nose wet. Look up at you, take a deep breath, look down at the toy and exhale SLOWLY until their nose is wet and making bubbles. This takes a lot of practice.
When they master the bowl of water on the table they are ready for a larger body of water like the bathtub.
For older students they can fill their hands with water from the bathroom sink and place their face in it like they are rinsing their face off and practice nose bubbles that way.
We will work on nose bubbles in every class if your child is ready to start learning them. It helps to work on them at home as students get restless working on this skill in the pool. They want to SWIM! Not hang out on the step working on a boring and HARD skill like this one. I can minimize the class time we spend on it if you work on it at home.
