If you’ve been following our Safer 3 water safety blog series, then you know that making sure that there are “Safer People” using and watching the pool is the final piece to the Safer 3 program!
If you haven’t been following this safety series, here are the 2 steps we’ve covered so far:
- Safer Water- Identifying and reducing the risks around any water
- Safer Response- Being prepared to assist a drowning victim in case of an accident
There are 2 ways to make sure that you and your family are safer people near water. The first is to make sure that there is one person who knows that they are responsible for watching the people in the pool. The second is to make sure that the people swimming know how to swim safer.
“Wait, I thought YOU were watching the kids in the pool?!?”
Did you know most drowning accidents occur when both parents thought the other one was keeping an eye on the kids? The best way to avoid this lapse in supervision is to designate a water watcher.
Your designated Water Watcher should:
- Know that it is solely their responsibility to be watching the people in the pool
- Should be able to provide a safer response
- Should be sober.
- Should not be distracted by conversations, the phone, or running in the house to answer the door, etc.
It is important that everyone near the pool knows who the designated Water Watcher is. This person should have some identification that distinguishes them as the Water Watcher, such as a special hat, shirt, or bracelet. You can also purchase a Safer 3 Water Watcher card for 45 cents here.
“Yes Timmy you have to take swim lessons!”
It is important for children of all ages to learn how to swim! Even if you don’t have access to a pool, there are lakes, rivers, streams, and oceans all over the country that hold possible drowning risks.
When a child learns to swim they become better prepared to react and self rescue during a water accident. It is very important to stress that while a child or adult may know how to swim you should never consider them “water safe,” as even those with strong swim skills are vulnerable around water. At Sea Otter Swim Lessons we highly encourage our swimmers to participate in lessons year round. Year-round swim lessons allow your child to retain and continue to strengthen their water skills. Waiting until the weather starts getting warm to restart swim lessons means the skills your child learned last year may be long forgotten.
“Safer at Sea Otter, Safer at Home”
During your child’s swim lessons, we make sure to have them follow some specific pool rules that encourage and teach them to become safer people around the pool. It is important as their parents or guardians to enforce these rules when at home, so that your children know that the safer rules they are learning at Sea Otter apply to all pools they swim in. Here are some of the rules we teach children during their lessons that we encourage you to enforce at your home pool:
- No one should ever swim alone.
- Parents should not rely on floaties, or flotation devices.
- Make children “sit and wait” by the pool until an adult gives permission to enter the water.
- Never run near the pool, always walk.
- Always look before you jump or dive into the water.
Here at Sea Otter Swim Lessons, we are committed to teaching your kids how to be safer swimmers, as well as teaching you how to keep your kids safer around the water. We believe that it is better to be proactive, rather than reactive to pool safety, which is why we are so passionate about following the Safer 3 water safety steps. If you’d like more information about getting your child enrolled in swim lessons please give us a call today at (916) 660-9492.