The most important rule for swimming is to make sure a responsible adult is supervising and watching each and every child that is in the water. Teach children not to enter the water unless they are being supervised. This is important for them to understand just how dangerous swimming is. Each and every year, unfortunately there are pool related accidents. Most involve drowning when adult supervision is not present.
Annually, the ER reports injuries associated with swimming pools. These injuries include diving accidents, head injuries, slips and falls and non-drowning. The risk escalates and increases every spring throughout the entire summer season. This is scary so it’s important to stress water safety.
Pools ought to be fenced in and have alarms to alert you if someone enters the area. Doors leading outside to the pool area must be locked at all times and make sure that little ones can’t get the doors open or gates open by themselves.
Additionally, emphasizing the proper use of equipment and pool toys in and around the pool makes great sense. For example, never run around the pool because the payment is wet and can be slippery. It’s hard for kids to learn and actually follow this rule. Ladders are wet so teach them to hold the rails with both hands.
Diving is dangerous in shallow water and a lot of times the children don’t think about the water depth. Caution is needed along with showing them exactly where it is safe to dive or stressing a “no dive policy”. Lastly, when they start to show fatigue it’s time to get out of the pool.
