Swimming is an essential lifesaving skill, plus an excellent form of exercise. Are lessons or competition in swimming or diving right for your child?

The basics: In competitive kids' swimming, athletes compete using one of four strokes: freestyle (sometimes called the crawl), breaststroke, backstroke, and butterfly. A race using all four strokes consecutively is called the individual medley (IM). Swimmers may also compete as part of relay teams. They may swim distances of 25 yards, 25 meters, or 50 meters; the Olympic standard is 50 meters. Divers compete in two kinds of events: springboard and platform diving. In each, the height of the diving board varies—either 1 or 3 meters for springboard, and 5, 7.5, or 10 meters for platform.