The Pool Safety Resource: The Commonsense Approach to Keeping Children Safe around Water

---

Most people have to deal with the road hazard when raising children.

For me, dealing with the lake is much the same as dealing with the road. It takes a three-pronged approach: Supervision, safety precautions, and teaching. When you live near water, it is important to supervise your children carefully anytime they could possibly get to the water.

I would divide our outdoor space into three parts: The deck, the backyard, and the water side. The third element of our approach is teaching. Obviously, as children get older, their understanding of safety and their capacity to self regulate increases. However, it doesn't always make intuitive sense, so it is important to keep on teaching and repeating yourself over and over. That has been our approach to water safety. I think we've gained so much by having access to the water and I love raising a family there. But it does require a level of supervision and attentiveness that a fenced in suburban pool-less backyard may not.

How do you ensure your kids are safe around water? Included in our boundaries is "Never head first. It hasn't come up in our case because it is 30 feet deep at the end of our dock and I can't even touch the bottom if I try. Also our kids are still scared to go head first. But I think we will add that one to the messaging once they've started diving, so that they'll remember it as we visit other locations. While reading this post, I realized I've been a little more overprotective than I thought. So, I wondered why. I think it's that I'm afraid of not being able to rescue them.

So, I've kept us all out of those types of situations by avoiding water situations I felt I couldn't control and by holding hands across the street for much longer than necessary. I've been intentionally working on both street and water safety with them this summer. I'd call my 5 year old a weak swimmer, but my older kids are strong. I just want to thank you for this post. It showed me ways to get over my fears and allow my kids as full of an outdoor life as they have indoors. Jackson is two and in his very first swimming class this summer, but I was thinking ahead and wondering at what point a parent can relax a little bit.

Just a little bit, mind you! I've never been a good swimmer can function in the deep end of a pool and off a diving board, but that's about it , and I once watched my partner nearly drown in the middle of a deep lake because he got too cocky about his own swimming abilities it was terrifying.

I struggle not to be fearful about having our toddler in the water. Having some sensible guidelines and knowing that kids CAN enjoy the water without being in danger helps me to be comfortable allowing him this wonderful way of exercising, enjoying nature, and having fun. There's no real age - it's more of ability, but the thing is, the 13 year old still tries to pull stupid stunts without the foresight to realize how he could hit his head, for example, so my eyes are always looking for both of them in the water. I only let my son swim without a life jacket in the lake once he had demonstrated in a pool that he could swim long distances without having to touch down or grab onto the wall.

When he could swim fairly well, but not very far, I would let him take the life jacket off when I was able to be within arm's length of him in the lake. I only let him out of arm's length once he was able to swim around 25 metres or so on his own without touching down anywhere. That said, when we are in shallow water, I am a bit more relaxed about it. My daughter can only swim about 10 metres or so without touching down. If we are in shallow water, I'll let her go without a lifejacket, knowing that she can put her feet down on the ground as needed.

But I always supervise carefully.

A friend of mine is an instructor and it teaches babies and small children how to float and get to the "side. Our sitter has a pool, and although there are safety fences around the pool, I feel like I would be remiss if I did not also get her trained. Thank you for this post! Water is the one thing that stresses me out more then anything else when it comes to my kids, and I'm doing my best to keep them prepared and safe while still enjoying water activities.

Last year, my son was 18m and would just walk out into the water until he could no longer touch and I'd have to run in after him. This year I bought him a life jacket thinking it would protect him. He walked in, ending up doing a face plant and began thrashing about, I had assumed it would just flip him over, but it didn't. My friends 8yr old had to flip him over, he cried and is now terrified of going in past his knees.

I had no idea that life jackets only flipped people over when they were unconscious.

Our city operates a public lake, and requires all children under 7 to wear a life jacket, I think it might give parents a false sense of security. Swimming lessons it is for next spring! A very nice post! And I do think your last sentence sums it up very well: The closer you live to danger - the safer you are. Because you know you have to take precautions and you follow through with them.

For me, this is similar to road safety: There are lakes, rivers, and pools all over the Midwest too, after all! I actually fell off a whitewater raft in high school once because a friend was using the raft wrong and I was stupidly too nice to tell her to move her feet, but thanks to water training and a life jacket , I didn't panic, and then with the help of a raft guide, got back in and told my friend to move her feet! Anyway, important topic and a very sensible approach-nice work: I hate rules like that.

When my sister was 4 years old she was on the swim team and racing in the 8 and under category. To put a life jacket on her would have been ridiculous. That said, there are many older kids and even adults that should be wearing life jackets. Aged based rules don't really help anyone. We also just moved onto a lake house. We gated our deck my toddler figured out the lock in ten seconds , and supervise him out in the backyard. Truthfully, though, he is naturally a cautious kid and I haven't felt worried about it.

I am going to get him swimming lessons I don't know why I haven't yet. I had thought about it but we just moved and it seemed like a lot.

I should get on that. That is a great post, Annie! I did a series of three short posts about getting your child used to the water.

Upcoming Events

Here is the first-. Jamaica Plain, summer, swimming, water [ Thank you for this post Annie. They are still quite young.

Items in search results

Will they eventually be allowed to go without? Also, at what age would one start swimming lessons and any recommendations? My LO is 15 months. When they are swimming from our dock, where the water is 30 feet deep, they wear life jackets at all times until they are very strong swimmers.

My son 7 years old , no longer has to wear his life jacket if I am closely supervising him. He can swim more than 25 metres without having to touch the bottom. My daughter 5 years can probably swim around 15 to 20 metres without having to touch down or hold on to something, so she is not allowed swimming in the deep water without a life jacket at all.

Related Video Shorts (0)

Both of them have been allowed in the lake without life jackets at the beach where it is shallow since they were able to walk. But they were never more than an arm's length away from me until they were strong swimmers. For me, it is both maturity and swimming ability that is important, not age. My kids have shown that they are cautious, so once their swimming ability develops sufficiently, they can take off the life jacket. That is a good point. In unknown waters, everyone should be extra cautious. In our lake, however, we know the lay of the land or the water!

They are, of course, supervised by responsible, sober adults at all times. When my kids were teenagers, we visited Florida. I let them go together to the pool at the campground without me, as they were both stronger swimmers than I was, but when they went swimming at a Gulf beach, I went along and didn't take my eyes off them -- but that was as much watching for sharks as anything else! Keeping kids safe when you live near a lake [ Those doorknob handle covers locks , for example can come apart, making the doorknob exposed to turning anyway.

While the following wasn't a water situation, we know someone whose toddler was killed by two dogs he had in the garage for breeding who weren't socialized to human contact, because the family was relying on the handle cover to keep the child out of the garage. I don't condemn anyone who chooses to live by water, but it's not for us; I prefer to err on the side of caution.

The Pool Safety Resource: The Commonsense Approach to by Geoff Dawson

Infant Swimming Resource has been a scientifically based "self-rescue" swimming program for over 40 years. With this amazing article about all the lines of defense that we put in place for our children, still drownings are the 2 accidental deaths in children under the age of 5. We believe this is the last line of defense to protect our children in all aquatic situations. Items in search results.

Format see all Format. All Listings filter applied. Condition see all Condition. Item Location see all Item Location. Show only see all Show only. Amounts shown in italicized text are for items listed in currency other than Canadian dollars and are approximate conversions to Canadian dollars based upon Bloomberg's conversion rates. For more recent exchange rates, please use the Universal Currency Converter. This page was last updated: Number of bids and bid amounts may be slightly out of date.

• Requiem, No. 1 from Mass No. 19 (Requiem) in D Minor, K626 (Full Score)
• Precious Gifts of A Lovely Audio Interview: How To Conduct Audio Interview That Can Be Sold For Prof
• Nonprofit Tax-Exempt Corporation Workbook
• Set Apart
• Medicina Basada en Cuentos V2 (Spanish Edition)
• Claimed For The Italians Revenge (Mills & Boon Modern)