How To Keep Children Safe From Water Accidents This Summer?

01:38 - How to prevent drowning
02:05 - Problems with floaties
02:32 - Swimming programs
03:15 - Train your child daily if can't afford swimming lessons
04:09 - Ensure that you do not leave your child unattended when in water
04:45 - Swimming pool alarms really help
05:04 - When in open water, wear life jacket

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Hey everybody, I am Harper Jones with Bow-Tiger and you are watching Saturdays with Harper. Today we're going to talk about a pretty serious subject but I think that because we are coming into summer months it's starting to warm up. It definitely needs to be talked about just for the safety of our kids, our toddlers and that is pool safety, really water safety in general. But it doesn't mean that we need to stick just to what to do while you're at the pool, we need to discuss things like while you're at the beach, out on the lake, whatever it is you guys do outside and in the water for fun.

We need to make sure that you do know and understand the proper safety rules when it comes to water and children. And I wanted to give a quick statistic just so you guys can understand the immensity of water safety and the necessity of water safety for our kids. Approximately 3500 people die unintentionally from drowning in the US every single year and 1 out of 5 of those people are children under the age of 14. Now even more so toddlers are more apt to being in that group because they can't swim or they don't know how to swim and they don't know how to yell for help. So they're kind of at a loss in the event they wind up in the water alone. So I wanted to go over some things that you guys can do to keep your toddler safe, maybe some precautions, some preemptive moves you can make so you can feel safe around the water with your toddler and when your family's out enjoying the beautiful outdoors.

So the first thing that I wanted to say is the best way to prevent drowning or prevent this from happening is to get your toddler swimming as quickly as possible. A lot of times we think that throwing a life jacket of course if you're ever out on open water you do need to have a life jacket on, but a lot of times we think if we throw a life jacket on or maybe throw some floaties on their arms, in the pool, they can float around, they can enjoy themselves and have fun.

Now the problem with this is that this does keep them afloat but this kind of gives them a false safety net. In the event that they didn't have those, they don't know what to do. They don't learn how to move their body in the water because they have this nice little safety net, whether it's a big life jacket or on their arms. So they feel safe but it's false security. So what you want to do is get your toddlers swimming as quickly as possible.
There's actually even programs for babies that you can do. It's kind of a mommy, daddy and baby program where you guys get in the water with the baby and it's teaching them specifically how to flip over if they're in the water, how to kick, how to get to the side if they need to get to the side eventually once they're in the more one to two years of age range. This is the best thing that you can do.

These people that are holding the program, hosting the program, they've done a lot of studying, a lot of instructional education to make sure that they understand how they can teach your children to swim or to at least float in the water and this could potentially save their lives. So get into one of those classes.

Now another thing, and I found this to be specifically helpful with my daughter, the classes were helpful. The classes are also very expensive. So if you don't happen to be a parent who can afford or wants to afford $200 to $300 to get your toddler swimming and let's say you have a pool at home so it is a necessity to you for them to swim, the other thing you can do is just continue to get in the water with them on a daily basis. It probably took me about two and a half weeks to get my daughter swimming. She had just turned two when she learned to swim. And she loved the water but for those two weeks that I was teaching her to swim it was a little bit of a nightmare. She wasn't the happiest camper but after the two weeks of me showing her how to do it and then me asking her to come a little bit further and a little bit further, she was swimming all the way across the pool by herself.

Another thing that I want to say though is even after you've taught your toddler how to swim, do not think that they are ready to just be out and about by themselves or that they can ever be left alone around the pool area. You do still want to make sure that you have other precautions to make sure that you're aware that they're in the pool, you are keeping a good eye on them, you can use a pool safety gate which can be installed even if it's not there already you can actually have one installed and it's drilled right into your pool deck and it's a great big safety gate that the kids can't get through without your help.

So that would be a good idea and then also they do have pool alarms. And this is an alarm that goes directly into the pool. If anything's to fall into the pool or drop into the pool, the alarm will actually sound off and that's what I use and I did test it out a couple of times and my dog decided to test it out a couple of times for me and believe me it's loud it works and you know something's in there.

So I did say that I didn't want to just touch on pool safety though, I wanted to touch on just water safety in general. So let's say that we are out at the beach or we're out on the lake but we're out in open water. One, you do always want to make sure that your child is wearing a life-jacket whether they can swim or not when they're out in open water. We have the issue if you're out at the beach of currents. You do need to be very very aware of that. There's...a lot of the times there are signs at the beach. Please make sure that you're aware and you stay away from those areas with your kids. And just make sure you guys don't go too far out as the currents can tend to sort of pull you out even further.

On the lake the same thing there, you want to make sure that you are wearing the life jacket. Of course we don't have tides in lakes but we do have a lot of boaters in lakes. So we want to make sure that we look out for other boaters, watch out for kids that are playing in the water if you're on the boat. And just be very very aware of your surroundings when you're out in open water with the kids.

So I mean those are a few tidbits of information that I would definitely suggest. Now these are all things that I've also used myself. I don't really ever like to offer any information that I haven't sort of tested myself or some of my girlfriends maybe haven't tested themselves.

I always want to provide you guys with information that has been used and it's been found to be good information and useful information as us as mothers and fathers try to get through these toddler years. Now of course, if you guys are watching this video on Facebook or YouTube, please be sure to check out our other blogs on bow-tiger.com. and we'll see you next week. Thanks.


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