Kids and Water

I know I said I would be talking about my teaching style on the next post and that one is still on the way but something happened to me at work that inspired this post so I had to write it.

What the heck goes through the mind of a child when they know they can’t swim independently yet, but they say screw it and jump in anyway? I have a 4 year old student who is just beginning to swim independently. We have been working on jumping in the pool and swimming out to me vs the sinking straight to the bottom that he normally does when I don’t help him. 

On Tuesday, he got out of the pool at the end of the lesson and wanted to jump again. I told him no and that he could jump again next class but that we were done for the day. He tried to get back to the side of the pool and I jumped up and reached for his wrist but he pulled free. (As I am writing this I am seeing it in my head in slow motion) After he yanked his wrist free, we made eye contact and I saw the idea click in his head. He sprinted down to the other end of the pool and I knew, I just knew I was about to sacrifice my dry hair for the day. (I wear a hat when I am teaching to help keep my hair dry. I try to avoid washing my hair every day. I will make a post about this at some point.) 

As I watch him put his toes over the edge and bend over to touch them (at least he knows the correct way to jump in the pool without slipping right?) I pushed off the bottom of the pool and swam over to him as fast as I could. Mask on, (I am wearing a silicone mask with a filter in it while I teach, be on the lookout for a post about teaching in the time of covid as well.) hat on and everything.

I got him as he landed at the bottom of the pool. His dad was upset with him for not following the rules and we did some drills to practice how to get himself out of the water if he were to actually fall in. All in all, he was fine, he was absolutely being defiant and jumping in because he was not done playing and he knew what he was doing. 

After the incident on Tuesday, I was so shaken up. My adrenaline was going crazy. My heart was pounding and I felt shaky. It took me a hot shower, a giant root beer from In N Out, and about two hours to calm myself down. I could not stop thinking about what had happened during my class. He made a point to go to the side of the pool where no one was at so he would have time to carry out his mischievous plan uninterrupted.

Moral of the story? Kids can be FEARLESS. What the heck goes through a kids mind when they just go for it and launch themselves into the unknown. Maybe it’s because they are inexperienced and don’t know yet that they should be afraid? Any way you look at it, it’s terrifying. The reason is not as important as just knowing that it’s a thing they do.

So what can we, the adults, do to keep the kids in our lives safe around water? Teaching kids to have a healthy respect for water is a good place to start. We have to do our best to make them understand that although water is fun, it can be dangerous. Even if you do this kids are unpredictable . You can’t turn your back on a kid for 2 minutes. Drowning is the leading cause of death for children under 2 years of age so we must do everything we can to keep them safe.

In order to do this we can employ a few different layers of protection. A major layer of protections is supervision. Kids should never be left unattended in the pool, even if they know how to swim. Designating a water watcher to keep an eye on things while kids are swimming is a must. To be extra safe, I would recommend touch supervision which means being in the pool with them close enough to grab them if they start to struggle. 

Another layer of protection is having pools properly secured through the use of gates and alarms. These help keep kids from wandering too close to the water when we, the adults, are not prepared to have them near it. 

A final layer of protection is my personal favorite, swim lessons. During swim lessons kids learn water safety skills like how to get themselves out of the pool and what to do if they fall in, how to call for help, how to crawl along the edge to find the stairs and many more things. As scary as it was for me to watch my student jump in the pool by himself, it also reminded me of why I do what I do and why I am passionate about it. Enrolling children in swim lessons is truly a gift to them. It is one of the only activities they can do that can potentially save their lives.