Posted on 06/02/2021
As summertime approaches, so much fun tends to revolve around water! Whether your family has a backyard swimming pool or likes to hang out at the beach or a nearby creek or river, now is a good time to do a little refresher about water safety and give your kids an overview of it as well.
When you compare deaths by drowning to deaths by fire, drowning accounts for 7 or 8 times the number of deaths by fire. Approximately 3500 to 4000 people die from drowning each year in the United States, for an average of 10 deaths per day. Drowning is the most significant unintentional, injury-related cause of death for children ages 1-4. Perhaps most startling is that 23% of drownings happen near a swimming pool, during family gatherings. The fact that adults are nearby does not necessarily make a child immune from the possibility. Death by drowning takes only between 20 and 60 seconds. You can find the statistics listed above, along with other resources for spreading awareness about drowning, from the organization Stop Drowning Now.
Family Water Safety Steps: Communicate Concerns
It may seem to you like a no-brainer that children need to exercise safety around water. But like so many topics, lack of maturity combines with lack of experience, making children especially at risk. While we want to be watchful when they are near water and avoid major hazards, we can't always; so our approach as parents needs to be multi-faceted, including educating and instructing our kids about how to avoid risks as well as how to respond in case of an emergency. Perhaps you could even make it a family theme night, complete with wearing swimsuits, eating blue jello and fish crackers, and watching a water safety video like this one. Then be sure to ask your kids questions about staying safe around water and responding if someone needs help.
Family Water Safety Steps: Eliminate Hazards
In addition to educating your older children about the risks of drowning, one of the top ways you can decrease all your children's risk of drowning is to make sure they're not exposed to any water hazards, unsupervised. If you have a backyard swimming pool, you'll want to make sure that there's a safety fence surrounding it, complete with a self-latching gate; this is something distinct from a privacy fence you may have surrounding your yard. Other hazards, especially significant for the 4-and-under set, include buckets or kiddie pools filled with water.
Family Water Safety Steps: Take Swimming Lessons
In addition to making sure your property is free from major risks, a major preventive measure can be to insist that your children take swimming lessons. The American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP, estimates that those who have taken swimming lessons have an 88% lower risk of drowning than those who have not learned how to swim. The reason for this isn't just the obvious - that strong swimmers are more capable in the water: it's also because those with more experience and instruction in the water have more respect for it and for the risks associated with it.
Continue reading with Part 2.
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