WABC has announced that Amanda Gawthorpe is the 2023 recipient of the prestigious Virginia Hunt Newman Award.
As the 2009 Award recipient, I am delighted that Amanda has been elected by an international committee that is committed to promote excellence, innovation and dedication to forward the gentle and safe introduction of babies to water and the foundations of early swimming.
Amanda’s whole life has been shaped by water since her parents, both swimming teachers, taught her to swim in the Cam river in the UK aged 2. At the time this was unprecedented. Infant Aquatics have been Amanda’s life calling and she has taught thousands of parents and babies as well as young children all over the world since the 1990s, first through Birthlight and then on her own initiative. Teaching swimming better has been and still is her life and passion.
Amanda Gawthrope
2023 Virginia Hunt Newman International Award Honoree
to be presented September 29, 2023 at ceremonies at the
International Swimming Hall of Fame, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida USA
Virginia Hunt Newman
“The Mother of Infant Swimming”
International Award
The purpose of this annual award is to carry on
the name of Ginny Newman and her philosophy of
teaching babies to swim in a kind, loving, caring, and
gentle way so they learn to love the water !
Amanda has been a wonderful friend and colleague since she joined me to teach pioneering infant aquatics classes in Cambridge in 1992. Her original style of teaching, using games and stories and helping parents to relax, laugh and discover their babies’ and toddlers’emotions in the water deserve recognition.
Amanda has done so much for the development of Infant Aquatics. The Special Infant and Child swim club that she developed out of Birthlight classes and kept going for years every weekend has transformed many families’ lives. Some special babies became beautiful swimmers and even engaged in competition.
Amanda was the first to take GENTLE Infant Aquatics to Russia, leading a change of culture towards a kinder approach to submersion and parent-infant interactions. See Anna Shkulanova’s testimony . She inspired a new generation of Infant Aquatics teachers in Russia and remains a loved and trusted trainer. Teachers came to train with Amanda from all over Russia including countries of the former Soviet Union between 2008 and 2017.
Amanda was also the first Birthlight trainer to go and teach Infant Aquatics in China and contributed to the development of the Eureka Kids school, the first influential swim school that created franchises in main Chinese towns. After 2016, she entered a close partnership with Hi Five and worked to design and develop their Infant Aquatics programme, including a transition to early years swimming that is still missing in most Infant Aquatics programmes worldwide.
Amanda was the first to take GENTLE Infant Aquatics to Russia, leading a change of culture towards a kinder approach to submersion and parent-infant interactions. See Anna Shkulanova’s testimony. She inspired a new generation of Infant Aquatics teachers in Russia and remains a loved and trusted trainer. Teachers came to train with Amanda from all over Russia including countries of the former Soviet Union between 2008 and 2017.
Amanda was also the first Birthlight trainer to go and teach Infant Aquatics in China and contributed to the development of the Eureka Kids school, the first influential swim school that created franchises in main Chinese towns. After 2016, she entered a close partnership with Hi Five and worked to design and develop their Infant Aquatics programme, including a transition to early years swimming that is still missing in most Infant Aquatics programmes worldwide.
Amanda’s most original contribution to Infant Aquatics is her development of Toddler Swimming with playful yet effective methods, both for beginner toddlers and for toddlers in transition to unaided swimming. She has co-authored the Toddler-Early Years Aquatics training manual with Francoise Freedman. To this day, this manual stands out as being specifically directed to the 18 months to 4 years age group. The progression from toddler swimming to early independent swimming in the gap between baby swimming classes with parents and young children’s swimming classes is still an issue worldwide because ‘baby swimming’ typically stops in the second year. Then children must start again in school-aged groups. Instead, there should be continuity in early years swimming. Virginia Hunt Newman specifically tackled this challenge to increase the confidence and safety of Californian small children with a gentle approach.
Amanda embraced Water Parenting, a concept coined by Francoise Freedman to counter the dominant focus on stereotyped classes with numbered submersions in a franchise dominated industry. She always encouraged parents to ‘float relaxed’ with their babies and the videos filmed in Russia in 2014-2015 are a testimony to expressions of love in the water between Russian parents and their babies and toddlers, contrary to stereotypes of Russian culture.
In the evolution of Birthlight, ‘baby-led submersion’ was adopted as an antidote to push-pull techniques to get babies under. Amanda has played a central part in developing transitional practices to help teachers implement this new concept without contradicting their past teaching, particularly in Russia and China where performance according to parents’ expectations still rules Infant Aquatics teaching. This is a crucial contribution in the current crossroads between Gentle Infant Aquatics and survival swimming skills for babies and toddlers. Amanda has been vocal and practical in the need to develop compromises that lead to ‘child-led swimming’ rather than focus on a baby sensory approach that avoids the challenges of submersion. Playful parent submersion and teaching by imitation appealing to infants’ sense of humour have been unique strengths in Amanda’s teaching through her life. A lack of compromise risks pushing parents to Water Survival Skills, which is a great loss to everyone and misrepresents Gentle/Happy Infant Aquatics, the creation of Virginia Hunt Newman.
Warm congratulations Amanda! The world needs your heart-centred teaching or babies and toddlers in water.
With love from Francoise.