In the fall, I enjoy watching my boys on the football field. Well, I’m not sure how much I actually enjoy it, but I do watch them as they run, tackle, hike and throw the football.

In the winter, it’s basketball: shooting baskets, making lay-ups, dribbling and setting picks. (Are you impressed with my knowledgeable vocabulary?) And with the spring comes baseball. With each sport, they practice. They practice a lot. In fact, schoolwork often takes a backseat to team sports and private lessons to ensure that they are performing at their very best ability. My husband is a stickler on good form and technique.

So imagine my surprise when he commented on the boys’ swimming abilities.

“Our children can’t swim,” he informed me.

‘Of course they can swim,” I told him, somewhat offended. Hadn’t I sat with each of them through water baby classes when they were little? “They took tons of lessons when they were younger. They’re completely safe in the water.”

“Safe” meaning they could swim and play in the pool without my assistance. They jump from the diving board and make it to the side without a problem, dive down to the bottom of the pool to pick up toys, do handstands in the shallow end, and float on their back. I never let them swim without an adult present, but I didn’t keep my eyes glued to the pool either. To me, they were “safe.”

“But they can’t swim,” my husband continued. “They don’t know any strokes.”

I had a vague recollection of swim classes years ago and screaming “big arms” and “kick” so I knew they had the basics. But when we asked them to do some free-style swimming for us, their technique was sadly lacking. Their fingers were splayed wide, their arms smacked the water like they were slapping at mosquitoes, their heads popped up like turtles each time they took a breath, and their kick was a cross between a flutter and a frog kick. They giggled like silly little boys when we asked if they knew the breast stroke.

I had to admit, my husband was right. My children didn’t know how to swim.

I promptly signed them up for swim lessons.

Moms, I know there are a lot of you just like me. When they were babies, we were scared to death at the thought of them drowning. We took them to swimming lessons to teach them to put their face in the water, hold their breath, and learn to float on their backs. When they could jump from the side and swim to us without coughing and sputtering, we breathed a sigh of relief.

Then, when they could touch the bottom of the pool in the shallow end, we were really excited. Once they could jump off the diving board and swim to the side alone, and we no longer had to actually get in the water anymore, we pronounced them “swimmers” and “water safe.”

But the truth is, that’s not being an accomplished swimmer, and it’s certainly not water-safe. I realized in those first few lessons, that although my kids did remember a few of the fundamentals of free-style, they were unable to swim from one end of the pool to the other without stopping or standing up once or twice.

If they fell off a boat and had to swim a pool length or two to shallow water, they would not be able to do it unaided. They didn’t have the proper skills.

Learning strokes is not just for kids on a swim team. All children who are going to be active in the water need the fundamental skills of swimming. Strokes are important because they give kids the tools they need to take care of themselves in the water, and it gives them confidence. They need to learn to tread water and be able to tread water for an extended period of time.

It only took a few lessons to get their strokes back on track. Now each time we go swimming, I have them swim a couple of laps using proper technique to keep it fresh in their mind. You wouldn’t think of letting them throw a football sidearm or shoot a two-handed free throw, would you? Good swimming technique is just as important!