London Infant Aquatics is independent, family run and set-up to offer quality Birthlight Infant Aquatics classes for babies in the City. The principle teacher is Peter Abu-Jabir, an experienced Birthlight trained Infant Aquatics and AquaYoga Teacher as well as a Swim England (ASA) Swimming Teacher and Synchro Coach.
London Infant Aquatics Birthlight classes are offered in Ipswich and in London* at the Thistle City Barbican Hotel, Clerkenwell for babies through to pre-schoolers on weekday mornings. Classes are centered around teaching parents aquatic skills and passing these onto their children. In young babies developmental stages are taken into account and practices are focused on maximising a baby’s ability to move in the water as well as using water as a tool to promote physical development.
Birthlight’s methods are designed to create an excellent foundation for the child’s future in the water, promoting safe practices and confidence. As well as this, the classes are an ideal environment for mothers and their new babies to bond, for children to begin to socialise and for whole families to spend quality time together.
Birthlight believes that a life long love of water and enjoyment are best generated by a confident and loving handling of babies in water, by swimming with babies and by imparting gentle progressive methods towards unaided movement in the water, without ever resorting to forceful conditioning. The sooner a child discovers the freedom of buoyancy and underwater movement, the more relaxed and independent he or she will be in water.
Every baby can become a water baby. Birthlight’s methods have been designed to create an excellent foundation for future swimming, promoting safe practices and confidence. Our classes are also an ideal environment for mothers and fathers to bond with their babies and toddlers, for children to begin to socialise and for whole families to spend quality time together.
The inspiration for birthlight’s gentle, yet dynamic approach comes from Amazonian forest people with whom Françoise Freedman lived as an anthropologist. Her swimming background stimulated her interest in the joy of water that forest people experienced daily as families and also in the ways that children playfully taught younger siblings how to swim.
The Birthlight approach has been developed over twenty years to promote not just the early foundations of swimming, but also ‘water parenting’. We truly nurture the bond between parents and infants with specially designed movements that are both gentle and very effective for the development of survival skills and swimming.
Birthlight’s pioneering techniques are at the forefront of international approaches. Françoise received the prestigious Virginia Hunt Award in 2009 for her contributions to early swimming and together with other birthlight tutors she continues to innovate to in promoting a life long enjoyment of swimming from an early start.
Swimming Classes 