Wayne Carpendale (46) learned to swim as a child in a rather unconventional way. “My mom went to a lifeguard in Florida at the time and was like, ‘Can you teach my son to swim?’ He said: ‘Yes, of course’ and pushed me into the pool,” recalls the presenter and actor at the start of this year’s “Schauma Family Days” in the Maximare adventure thermal baths in Hamm. At this and the three following events of the family brand, in addition to family time together, the responsible use of water is again in the foreground.
Wayne Carpendale’s son Mads (5) just did his free swimmer and the seahorse. “He already had a real affinity for water when he was two and a half,” reveals the 46-year-old. Together with his son and wife Annemarie Carpendale (45), he spends a lot of time at Lake Starnberg in the summer. Family comes first for the couple. “Of course, sometimes it’s work that family time doesn’t fall by the wayside,” the moderator clarifies in the interview.
Wayne Carpendale: In a way I wouldn’t recommend, because my mom went to a lifeguard in Florida at the time and was like, ‘Can you teach my son to swim?’ He said, ‘Sure thing’ and pushed me into the pool. That settled the matter. Then I could more or less swim. Well, I would definitely recommend a more gentle and sensitive way.
Carpendale: I don’t know, probably between four and six.
Carpendale: Hard to say because we don’t compete in the water, my wife and I. Anne has incredible stamina. She likes to swim laps for half an hour or more every day on vacation. And I’m faster because of my constitution and my strength and a real diving rat. We both just feel completely comfortable in the element of water.
Carpendale: He’s five years old now and just did his Freischwimmer and the Seahorse and is very proud of that and of course we are too. Mads already had a real affinity for water at the age of two and a half, he always wanted to dive on vacation and felt really safe even in the deeper water. We then tried whether he had the same ambitions on the water surface, i.e. when swimming properly, that’s a bit different again. And he was able to keep his head above water relatively well, which is often more of a problem with children of that age from a purely physical point of view. We encouraged that when we got home because we just noticed that he’s a water rat and it would have been a shame to wait another three years for most of the children’s swimming lessons to start in Germany. Now he has swimming lessons every week with some of his kindergarten friends and he absolutely loves it. Of course we do too! Aside from the fact that he’s enjoying it and getting lost in it and moving about it, it’s a nice feeling to know that whenever he encounters the element of water, he’s comfortable in it and we don’t have to worry a little bit ourselves .
Wayne: What I think I’ve learned from observing is that parents often have more respect for the water than children. The parents are often very careful, I could see that in the first swimming lessons. If you convey to the child: Nothing can happen to you here if you pay attention and are careful and learn to swim and as long as I’m with you anyway. If you deal with water in a completely natural way, then the child will also deal with it naturally. Our swimming instructor complimented us on getting in the water with the kid, but also when we said, “Hey, we trust you, here’s our kid.” Like I said, it has to be respected, but we’ve never been overly fearful and I think that’s the first thing you can teach your child about water. A confidence in this element and one’s own ability to cope in this element, namely learning to swim. And of course I would like to motivate them to go to swimming lessons – that’s why I’m at the Schauma Family Day. I know it’s not that easy to get a place in a swimming school, but above all we have to catch up and support the children who didn’t learn to swim during the pandemic.
Carpendale: No pressure at all. As I said, that first came out of Mads. He wanted to dive and swim in the pool of his own accord and then pretty quickly got tired of arm bands. And then when we got home, it would have been silly to simply put it off again. That’s why we looked for swimming lessons for him.
Carpendale: The nice thing about being a parent is that two very different people come together, with different histories, with different upbringing. You learn from your own upbringing how you want to do it and what you might want to do differently. And then it’s the job of parents to bring these two different parenting styles together. Anne and I complement each other very well. Nobody is the stricter one, nobody is the one who tends to stick with it, sometimes it’s me, sometimes it’s her. I’m certainly more of the one who organizes and structures and Anne is a very big gut and heart person and that also complements each other well. Maybe someone has the idea, but the other pursues it at least as ambitiously and with just as much enthusiasm.
Carpendale: Sure, sometimes it’s work that family time doesn’t fall by the wayside. Sometimes you just have to do something right for it. You can’t bombard yourself with appointments and then be surprised that there isn’t enough time left for the family. I have to be honest, Mads is five now, and I think by the time it comes down to it, he’s spent three nights without Mom and Dada, as he calls me. That means at least at night we are always together as a family or at least one parent is with him. We take him with us a lot, do our best to come home in the evening if we have a job somewhere else during the day. That’s why we actually have a lot of family time. But that doesn’t just happen, you have to reduce the complexity of your life a bit, worry a little less about other things and of course set your priorities well.
Carpendale: In fact, often something to do with water. We have a mobile home on a campsite on Lake Starnberg, and we really, really like it there. Of course, Mads and we swim in the lake every day or stand on the stand-up paddle board. When we are on vacation, water in the form of the sea or pool is always part of it. Water is somehow summer and vacation and of course swimming is part of that.
Wayne: Yeah, we’re going to be at a good friend’s wedding in Mallorca soon. And then we’ll add Ibiza for a week. After that, things really get busy with us professionally. So first the pleasure and then the work.
