All three of my kids learned to swim on their own at 4. They all took private swim lessons. Swimming is a life skill that we felt was important to invest in. I would say it wasn't until about 6 when I could really trust them to go wherever they want in the water (deep end). My youngest is 5-1/2 now and she is going down the water slide and off the high dive, but still not allowed to go into the deep end by herself.

I felt confident letting my kids swim independently in a pool around age 6 as well. They both took lessons starting as toddlers and have always been comfortable in and around water. We spend a lot of our summers on a lake and even though I feel they are confident swimmers in a pool - I still have them wear life jackets if they are swimming in water that is over their heads at the lake because it's a more unpredictable environment.

My older kids learned to swim on their own about 5 or 6. I used to be pretty relaxed with swimming lessons until my daughter had a near-drowning when she was two. After that, we made it a priority to start swimming lessons early. My twins learned to swim across the pool just after they turned 3. I would have loved for them to swim independently earlier, but they just weren't quite ready before then. We worked with them and they had lessons for quite a while before they picked it up. I wrote more about our experience in this blog post and shared a bit more information about why we chose to do swim lessons when we did - busymommymedia.com