In general, it helped him get comfortably into the sea (3 years old) and feel ready to swim on his own, but (1) it slips down if the child is wearing a swim shirt and should not be worn directly on bare skin, (2) after 3 uses he complained that it bothers him in the armpit so we switched to arm floats, and (3) the interior of the life jacket moves up and down, it is not sewn, resulting in having to fix it constantly.