There is competitive swimming for five-year-olds??? 
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Oh yeah!! Most of the kids on my team growing up started at 5-6 yrs old. I started when I was almost 10 and was considered late and that I would never reach my full potential 
similar vibes to gymnastics, starting as early as possible
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Yep 
. I (and sibling) got thrown into swimming earlier than that just because of family history and learning to swim not being an optional thing
probably guessable given above
grandparent had a sibling drown, never hesitated to tell story
but at least a swim team kept being available almost everywhere we moved so it was kind of ‘why not?’ Personally I’m not particularly competitive and I suspect drove some of the coaches a little crazy just because I love swimming but never particularly cared who won, but there were definitely kids (and parents) who were pushing pretty hard for recognition/scholarships/etc.
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I do some casual exercise in Saalt, which is very nice, feels less sweaty to me than Thinx, and is on sale for $27 right now. But haven’t tested anything in Egypt-like climates!
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Are kids not learning how to swim by 5?
I thought that was a standard age
I had a same age coworker who had never learned to swim. I only learned this because he was starting to take some lessons which I thought was fantastic. He’s black, I don’t know if that’s a factor (like if his parents didn’t have pool access from the bad old days they wouldn’t have done pool or beach activities as a family so when would he have learned as a kid).
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shadowy one never learned to swim and at this point is unwilling to learn 
at least at one point was living 2 minutes away from the beach
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I am betting that’s true in Florida but perhaps not other states where there aren’t beaches or plentiful backyard pools
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Seems to be pretty regional…I’ve lived places where it seemed standard for kids to learn to swim, although maybe not by 5 since it was part of their late-elementary-ish gym curriculum and other places where the “deep end” of the city pool was 5ft deep and the majority of adults weren’t putting their faces in the water.
ETA–I wouldn’t be surprised if race was a factor both from an accessibility and other issues standpoint…depending on where we were living there were kids across the spectrum, but especially in high school the black girls on the team seemed to have more issues with hair care and chlorine than most of us, with the possible exception of the two siblings whose hair was so close to white it ended up tinted green mid-season no matter what they did.
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I’d say that in Wisconsin, you’d have to be pretty darned middle class to have swimming lessons as a preschooler. It’s expensive. The public pools are open under 3 months/year and other than that you have to belong to a pool club or gym.
But having been to 5yo soccer, I’m dubious about the idea of 5yo swim team. Does the coach stand at one end of the pool yelling “This way! This way!”?
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Can confirm, middle class here in Chicago and it ain’t cheap!! But it is a priority for me because I have so many good memories of long summer days spent at the pool with my siblings. And my husband is not a confident swimmer. So started Ravioli young!
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Interesting because next door in Minnesota I feel like it is considered an imperative skill to learn at an early age - maybe due to all the lakes, ya know 
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I also think there’s a difference between “taking swim lessons” and “swimming,” and an even bigger leap to “swim team.”
I was in ENDLESS swim lessons as a kid, through elementary school, because my mom was neurotic about us being able to swim. I’m grateful I know how, but I definitely didn’t need the last several years worth of lessons.
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Yeah big difference between lessons, swimming and swim team. I learned to swim at 3, but didn’t learn to “swim team” until I was 9. I had to take a whole year of “swim team preparation” lessons before I was allowed to join the actual team, and that’s when I learned all 4 strokes, flip turns, etc
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I grew up next to a lake and so could swim from a very young age, as could every kid I knew. Now I live in a city with no swimmable bodies of water and only middle class kids know how to swim. Poor kids and immigrant kids don’t swim, and it’s a problem when they encounter water.
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Honestly, I spent my childhood swimming in lakes (which we now know are filled with brain eating amoebas and alligators) and I didn’t know anyone who had formal swimming lessons.
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Wait what?! All lakes or the particular lakes you were swimming in?
I live in Minnesota and we do NOT have alligators. I know there have been a couple of extremely rare cases where there have been super weird infections from lakes. Most things here do not survive the cold which is nice.
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I was going to say…I know about weird bacteria and alligators in southern lakes but not typically the northern ones.
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Florida lakes!
Though those brain eating amoebas have turned up quite a few places, including water parks. (We’re all going to die, though…)
But I only swim in warm water. There is not a lake in Wisconsin that I would swim in, so I’m quite safe!
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