WATER SAFETY

It’s that time of the year again when parents delight in the fun children have when playing in water, not forgetting how dangerous it can be for the little ones who cannot swim. Well, children under two years of age may not be able to swim like Olympic champs but they can certainly swim well enough to get around in water if they were shown how.

Nell White, founder of AQUATOTS Swim Program, believes that statistics for toddler drowning would be dramatically reduced if parents were empowered to teach their own little ones to swim. She maintains that knowledge of infant swimming should be regarded as an essential parenting skill. Knowing how to teach your infant to swim is not only a most enriching and rewarding experience that should not be denied a parent, but nurtures a respect for water in the child that greatly enhances the child’s chances of survival in and around water. By enrolling their babies in swim schools, parents are given the opportunity to learn about the basics of infant swim teaching by actually teaching their own child to swim while guided by an instructor.

Teaching infants to swim is to teach them to survive in an aquatic environment (the pool). It can be compared to how one brings up children to survive in their normal everyday environment in so far as showing them and telling them what they can and what they cannot do. What is safe and what is not, and so on. But before parents can successfully do this, they must have a good understanding of what their child is capable of in water. For parents who are eager to get started what better time than right now with the following.

• Always concentrate on teaching little ones to be independent in the water by encouraging them to do whatever they can do on their own,
• Never allow children to jump into water that is out of their depth and then catch them in mid-air to put them back on the side,
• Teach toddlers to climb into the pool backwards and stay holding onto the side,
• Show toddlers how to hand-walk along the inside of the pool by holding onto the top of the pool and moving along to the shallow end or step so that they can climb out themselves,
• Encourage children to play rough and tumble style in shallow water so you can help them up each time they fall until they have learned how to get back onto their feet themselves,
• Always be within touch supervision of children when they are in or around water.