And you are never too young to learn how to swim. While many parents may shy away from letting their toddlers or even their babies near the water, Mandy Oatley Wells specialises in getting youngsters into the water and feeling comfortable. In fact her own two kids were in the water getting submerged when they were only two weeks old!Ms Wells runs Swimming Instinct which began operations in 2004 a year after Ms Wells returned to Bermuda after studying and working abroad. Previously, Ms Wells had run Harbourkids Harbour Swim Club’s summer learn-to-swim programme. She also has had 20 years experience teaching swimming and was a competitive swimmer herself and it was that competitive background that taught her the importance of making people aware of the correct way to swim whether the aim was for fitness, recreation or competition.“Officially we start taking babies at three months,” said Ms Wells adding, “but I will take them earlier.”Ms Well has two pools at her Ferry Reach facility one for babies in the group lessons and the other for older kids who take individual lessons.“I have 20 instructors over the summer most who are in college and are trained,” she said.“The group lessons are for babies up to three years old. From there we have lessons until they are nine or 10 years old. We don’t have lessons for adults because I really do not have the time now that I have a family but I must admit there is a great demand for adult lessons for not only expats who have come to Bermuda and are not able to swim but also for many Bermudians who have never learned how to swim.”As for Ms Wells, she comes from a long line of Bermudian sailors where jumping into the water was like walking.“Like many people I never did lessons I just got chucked overboard off the boat!”And while many Bermudians years ago learned to swim by “being chucked overboard” Ms Wells said that the majority of kids today learn in the pool first.Of getting babies into the water, Ms Wells said: “Getting them into the water has great benefits. It really stimulates their appetite and makes them sleep incredibly well because it is such good exercise. And I use music with all the group baby lessons.”Ms Wells has an undergraduate and postgraduate degree in music education. Most of the babies come for the six-month programme. “I take the babies from the parents five times during the lesson but they (the babies) do spend the majority of time in the water with their parents. When I take the babies I submerge them under the water and I do backfloats with them. I teach the parents to do the other things with their babies like falling off from the side and turning around and holding on to the side (of the pool).”Other parts of the lessons includes games and exercises like ‘wheels on the bus’ and the ‘hokeypokey’.“We do things like that to make the kids happy in the water I want the babies to feel that this is a fun place to be. They can have fun clapping and splashing to the music. That is not necessarily improving their water skills but it is making them happy to be in the water so I can then submerge them. Some will not necessarily be happy with that! But I want them to have a rapport with me, the music and the lesson.”For some babies being submerged underwater can be great it depends on how old the baby is.“It is a natural instinct for a baby and obviously the younger you can get them the better it is. I had mine (underwater) at two weeks (old). My little girl (Sophie) is eight months now and my son (Aiden) is four years old. He screams a fair bit but Sophie is totally chilled out.”For very young babies being submerged is “like going back into the womb”.Ms Wells said: “It is like reverting back to being in the womb because there is liquid in the womb. You can capture that memory and it calms them down. As soon as you get those ears in the water they feel great. The older ones don’t retain that (memory) but the younger ones do.”When the kids are in the programme Ms Wells said she doesn’t encourage them to do much swimming except for the lessons.“The thing that is different about my lessons is that I am very picky about having good technique right from the very beginning. The more children swim the harder it is to teach them good technique. While if they swim a lot (outside of the lessons) they get very strong and have a lot of stamina but they lose their technique because no one is critiquing them. Then they develop bad habits and their technique takes longer to develop. The ones who come for the four weeks of lessons (Monday to Friday) for half an hour a day and are not swimming much outside those lessons develop their technique better and faster. It stays precise.”Some of the parents who bring their babies and kids to Ms Wells to learn to swim, can’t swim themselves.“I frequently have babies in the pool whose parents cannot swim. The parents come in because it is shallow but you can see they are nervous. But I say more power to those parents because they recognise that it is not great (situation) that they can’t swim and they want their kids to learn and started early. It is brave of parents who can’t swim especially when they see me submerging their babies they look on with fear but they try and not to pass on that fear to their children. I think today everyone wants their kids to learn how to swim.”But that was not the case years ago.“There are loads of Bermudians especially adults who do not know how to swim. And I think that is because their parents couldn’t swim and since we in Bermuda are always so close to the water, their parents were fearful that if they went in too deep or fell out of a boat they couldn’t go rescue them so they instilled fear of the water into their children. It was handed down from one generation to the next but I don’t think that is the case today.”All lessons at Swimming Instinct take place at a privately owned house in Ferry Reach, St George’s. There are two pools on the property; a 34-foot pool with a maximum depth of eight-feet and a newly and purpose built baby pool which is a comfortable standing depth for adults.While living abroad, Ms Wells had a key role in the development of one of the UK’s largest and most innovative swimming schools. Many of the techniques used by Swimming Instinct have grown out of her four years of experience in London.Instructors are locally trained specifically to teach using the Swimming Instinct methodology.The website address is www.swimminginstinct.com