In the Swim at an Early Age : Lessons: Some instructors believe you’re almost never too young for your first dip.

Hello, beautiful! Got any plans for the summer? Just going to lie there and bask in the adulation of family and friends? Aren’t you tired of that yet? You must be at least a month old by now.

Maybe it’s time you thought about swimming lessons. I mean, getting out there and earning some of that praise.

Let me tell you what’s available.

First of all, for the very young, there’s Marjean’s Swimland. It’s nothing fancy. Just a T-shaped pool in the back of a Santa Paula home. The pool-side atmosphere is similar in atmosphere to a family reunion. Everyone’s wide-eyed and smiling. It’s as if they feel they are participating in some kind of miracle. Proud parents hoist their minicams. Children of all ages splash, swim and play games. Sometimes their grandmothers, who have just learned themselves, swim with them.

And standing in the middle of all this activity, shoulder-deep in water is Marjean Tinoco.

Marjean--forget the Tinoco, she’s one of those one-name people, like Cher--has a gift for teaching people how to swim. She’s known for teaching the unteachable--the disabled, the epileptics, the 90-year-old grandmothers.

But most of all she’s known for successfully teaching infants.

Today, Marjean has four young students and their mothers in the pool with her. Dylan is 11 weeks old, Raquel 10 weeks, Jeanette 7 weeks, Chelsea 5 weeks. Laura is the old pro of the group at 5 months.

They’re not the only ones in the pool. Two preschool boys splash in the shallow end. A nervous 2-year-old girl hangs on Marjean’s back. Marjean moves from child to child, holding, chiding, calling bluffs. She has an eagle eye, knows exactly what’s going on at every moment with each child, what they need, when they’re ready. She’s part traffic cop, part water guru. Screaming, fearful babies and children whose parents cannot calm them come to Marjean’s broad and suntanned shoulder and stop their screaming. And then she gives them her gift.

With each child it’s different. She takes the infants one by one, puts them on her shoulder, talks to them, calms and reassures them, then gives them a gentle push toward their waiting mothers.

“I believe in going slow and lots of praise,” says Marjean, who spends 12 to 13 hours in her pool, six days a week.

“She’s an excellent teacher,” says Dr. Geoffrey Loman, a family practitioner in Ventura. His daughter Rebecca, now 6, began swimming with Marjean at 8 months. His twin sons Hailey and Daniel, now 2, began swimming at about 5 months.

Denise Lukens of Somis has three daughters who learned to swim with Marjean. “I put them in as soon as their belly buttons fall off,” Lukens says. “Whatever Marjean’s doing, she’s doing it right. My kids never cry in the pool, except when they have to get out.”

Marjean has been teaching for 37 years, 20 of them in Ventura County. She had polio as a child, wore braces until she was 10 and began swimming to regain the use of her muscles. She started teaching when she was 16, using the Red Cross method for a few years, gradually developing her own style.

She taught her children, Cindy and Joe, to swim when each was 4 days old and Marjean discovered her calling.

Why start a child swimming so early?

“They learn breath control and are never afraid of the water,” Marjean says.

Nancy Garrett, who has been teaching at the Pierpont Racquet Club in Ventura for 12 summers, says the ideal water temperature for infants is as close to body temperature as possible. That eliminates most pools for infants right off the bat. The pool at Marjean’s Swimland is 95 degrees.

The pool at Pierpont Racquet Club is heated to about 85 degrees. According to Garrett, a child needs about four months to build up the necessary body fat for that temperature. So Garrett’s classes begin at four months.

In all swim classes for children 2 and under, parental participation is required by law. “Non-swimming parents can do it, too,” Garrett says. “You never have to go into deep water. You just have to be comfortable.”

Garrett also stresses two important prerequisites for parents before enrolling their children in any swimming class.

“Be sure the instructor has a Red Cross Water Safety Instructor certificate and has taught children before,” Garrett says. “And talk to your doctor first.”