If you know that you won't be able to attend before the class takes place, you can let us know via your My Puddle Ducks account on both your Overview page and also your My Children page by clicking on 'Let us know you can't attend a lesson' and following the instructions. This will generate a Courtesy Class for you to then use against any lesson where there is space in the next 6 months (provided you are currently in paid-for lessons). Read more in our Courtesy Classes FAQs

• If your child has a chest, ear, throat or eye infection they shouldn't swim until it has completely cleared.
• Please don't bring your child to the pool during, or for two weeks after, suffering from diarrhoea.
• Going swimming is unlikely to worsen a mild cold and will not increase the likelihood of an ear infection unless your baby has a perforated eardrum.
• Please do not bring your child to a swimming class with anything that could be infectious, such as chickenpox, which is considered infectious until all the blisters have dried up.
• It's worth remembering that children are often exhausted after an illness and need some time to recuperate before returning to their swimming lesson.

Your child, no matter how young or how new to swimming they are, will never wear armbands in a Puddle Ducks lesson. We want to teach your child to swim independently and how to be safe in the water. There are compelling reasons why we don’t use armbands:

1. If your child fell into water when on holiday or even just on a riverside walk with the family, they probably won’t have armbands on. Their experience in their swimming lessons needs to be as realistic as possible. Water safety is a core building block in our lesson plans and everything your child learns will, unbeknown to them, be teaching them vital life-saving skills.
2. We teach our Puddle Ducks to swim beautifully. Technique is ingrained at every level and wearing armbands hinders this. Your child will learn to swim on the surface of the water, gracefully and efficiently. If they wear armbands, they will not be aligned in the water. Their top half will be bobbing above the water, forcing their bottom half to dip down, making the alignment required for independent swimming all but impossible.

Non-fitted buoyancy aids (such as floats or woggles) allow children to push away from them when they are ready to be independent whereas fitted aids (arm bands) require an adult to deflate them. We would never recommend the use of inflatables or buoyancy seats – these can flip toddlers over into the water and even land on top of them, making it difficult for them to surface.

Yes – with care, nurturing and reassurance. It is important never to rush because children develop at different stages on land and it's the same in the water. 

The main thing is to stay relaxed and have fun – if you start to force an activity on a child when they are nervous, they will respond with resistance, develop further nerves and the lesson will not be enjoyable. Allow them to watch others and to just be in the pool. 

We find that children who also swim with their family outside of structured lessons progress from being nervous much quicker than others so go and have fun and allow your child to lead. Never force.