One big downside to taking your baby to swimming lessons is that he or she may still be too young, despite the age recommended by the swimming program.

"We took our 5-month-old daughter to swimming lessons last summer and we finished the two-week program, but looking back she was way too young," says Lori Bittenbender, a mom from Dallas, Texas. "The water was way too cold; she shivered and cried most of the time. And she was way too young to understand how to do the monkey crawl along the wall."

Some experts also caution that exposure to pool chemicals can be dangerous for small children. "The problem with using chlorine in pools for sanitation is that the chlorine mixes with everything from sweat to skin flakes to form a toxic soup of byproducts," says Ann Haiden, an internist in private practice in Kentfield, Calif. "These byproducts, like trihalomethane, trichloramines and dichloroacetonitrile, can actually sit above the water in a gas that can be breathed in."

Studies have shown that breathing these chemicals can contribute to the development of asthma. Luckily, some methods drastically reduce the need for chlorine. The two main alternative methods are ozone and UV sanitation. Salt water and bromine are two other methods that some pools use. However, salt water is actually used to create chlorine from salt rather than adding the chemical directly, so the pools that use saltwater still contain chlorine. And bromine can form bothersome byproducts just like chlorine, and in some studies, bromine has been shown to bind in the thyroid in place of iodine. So while these alternatives are better, they aren't as safe as ozone or UV, Haiden says.

"The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends waiting until at least age 4 to start swimming lessons for the purpose of actually learning to swim," Haiden says. "But for the purpose of acclimating a young child to water, there appears to be more room for personal discretion."

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