You may think freestyle is the only stroke that your child needs to learn. You may wonder if learning other strokes is valuable or just a waste of time. We will describe the benefits of learning other strokes besides freestyle.
Firstly, freestyle is the most efficient stroke to get you somewhere quicker and faster.
However, it can be tiring. If your child was out in a boat and needed to swim back to shore, they would firstly begin freestyle. At some stage they may get tired and need a longer breath of air so by knowing breaststroke they can keep moving at a slower pace but still swimming forward. Swimming breaststroke also gives them a better chance to orient themselves to find the direction of the shore. Again, if in more distress they can turn on their back to swim backstroke. This is also useful if later in life they decide to do triathlons or open water swimming.
When the child is quite a developed swimmer, swimming several strokes gives the body a better workout using a larger variety of muscles. Swimming is more fun because you can vary your strokes. The skills that are learnt in one stroke can then be useful when learning other strokes, using similar principles.