<p>Thank you for the idea for the hotel pools. Unfortunately, we live in a very litigious state, Louisiana. You wouldn’t believe how high our car insurance is. I am in the legal industry, and it amazes me how many people sue for mishaps, slip and falls, etc, while attending free events for the underprivileged. I would seriously doubt any private hotel would want to open themselves up to that kind of liability.</p>
<p>I saw this story on the news last night.How tragic. I am glad to hear some colleges still require a swimmimg test. Simple safety measures. My younger s is not a strong swimmer. He has taken lessons and been on a swim team when very young. Just not great at it. I hope he will consider working on that. My prayers are with this family.</p>
<p>My husband refused to allow our kids to use flotation devices of any kind until they were strong swimmers. He said they would become overconfident and think they were safe. He wanted them to have a healthy respect for the water and know where they could and couldn’t go. They all swam well by the time they were in kindergarten. Never needed lessons. Just playing in the water and becoming comfortable. They only took lessons later to improve form.</p>
<p>Here in Mass we’ve had two incidents in the last couple weeks where kids have drowned in the family swimming pool … in the last incident a pair of 4 year old twins drowned while the Mom home. I get the draw of a home pool … but my paranoid side wouldn’t want one until my youngest was a solid swimmer … there are too many incidents with little kids and pools for me.</p>
<p>We had a pool when my first was a baby and before she was 1 she could swim underwater across the jacuzzi and only got stronger from there. Baby swim classes were big in SoCal in the 80s and in hindsight that is one trend I like.</p>
<p>We have had an above-ground pool my whole life, which is probably why we learned to swim so well-- otherwise I’d have only had the opportunity to practice once a year on vacation. When my parents weren’t sitting right on the deck watching, the ladder was padlocked in the shed, I have never known and still don’t know where my dad keeps the key-- not to mention that the ladder weighs about 50lbs. I wasn’t tall or strong enough to pull myself into the pool without the ladder until I was a teen, the sides were too high.</p>
<p>My D just graduated from high school. She just learned that a fellow-graduate drowned Saturday in his grandparents’ pool in upstate NY. Autopsy results just came back and no drugs or alcohol were involved. It happened 4pm in the afternoon. They’ve held a vigil at his home and at our high school. It wasn’t the way she had envisioned getting back together with her classmates.</p>
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<p>I grew up spending summers at a lake, and still go back for a week every summer. My sisters and brothers and I all learned to swim early, which is a good thing because the water is dark; you can’t see a swimmer even six inches underwater. When my son (who is a poor swimmer, and by the way no it isn’t always easy to teach a young kid to swim) was younger I watched him like a hawk when he was in lakes, even if we were at a lake with a lifeguard. If a swimmer silently slips underwater, there’s no way the lifeguard will notice. </p>
<p>A lifeguard can’t possibly be watching every swimmer every second. All they can do is watch for situations that might turn dangerous. But if a kid slips underwater in a lake, it’s the parents’ fault, not the lifeguards’.</p>
<p>Kids who join Boy Scouts will generally learn to swim. Probably Girl Scouts, too.</p>
<p>Montegut, you couldn’t swim in Lake Ponchartrain when I lived in NOLA, but evidently the clean-up efforts have worked
[Lake</a> Pontchartrain Basin Foundation](<a href=“http://www.saveourlake.org/swimming.php]Lake”>http://www.saveourlake.org/swimming.php)</p>
<p>toledo:</p>
<p>That’s awful. I wonder what happened to cause it? I hope your D is dealing with it as well as can be expected.</p>
<p>My D has taught swimming lessons to children for the last 5 summers, so I’ve heard a lot of stories about kids in water. She’s great with them, and has even learned how to teach the recalcitrant, fearful ones. I agree that ALL children should learn to swim. Here in NYC, there are a lot of public pools. I’m going to suggest to D to look into this swimming foundation – perhaps she could even start her own chapter! It’s such a needless tragedy – all it takes is a few lessons on how to behave in the water.</p>
<p>I know that the Olympian Cullen Jones had been mentioned upthread. My daughter who was a USA swimmer met him through friends several years back. Here is a link to his foundation. He learned how to swim after he almost drowned as a child.</p>
<p>[USA</a> Swimming Foundation](<a href=“http://swimfoundation.org/Page.aspx?pid=350]USA”>http://swimfoundation.org/Page.aspx?pid=350)</p>
<p>3togo,
you are correct that numerous kids drown in back yard pools. However, back yard pools can be made safer. When our kids were little, the pool was surrounded by a fence with a self latching gate. In addition, the gate had a padlock. The fence was too tall for them to climb and they couldn’t reach the lock. They knew they weren’t allowed on the pool side of the fence without us and they absolutely were not allowed in the pool without one of us in it first. There’s no way I would have a pool with young kids without having a fence around it. Parents with pools and kids need to be extremely vigilant and paranoid to make it safe. Unfortunately, a lot of parents let their guards down with tragic results.</p>
<p>This is driving me crazy at my building’s unguarded pool. There are a few families with kids age 3-8 who are exceptionally strong swimmers. These kids are very frequently in the pool with either periods of no supervision (parent goes inside periodically) or totally BS supervision (mom face down on chaise tanning her back, dead to the world, or strolling by the fence having extremely important cell phone conversations and admiring the skyline). Worse, the “older” kids, 7 and 8 years old, do lots of headfirst diving in the 5-foot-deep pool. Signs say that there is no diving and children must be supervised, but these are ignored.</p>
<p>As I say, the kids swim and dive like a bunch of penguins, so on the one hand, it’s understandable that the parents wouldn’t feel they need real supervision. But on the other hand, WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE??? Do you think your 4-year-old can safely swim alone, or in your mind, is her life in the hands of the 6-year-old? Do you really think a 7-year-old can understand the risk of smashing vertebrae if she mis-judges her dive angle just so?</p>
<p>I’m really troubled, because even if the kids’ safety were none of my business, which I’m sure the parents would claim, my financial security IS my business. If one of those kids dies in that pool, all the signs in the world will not protect the condo association from a bankrupting lawsuit. A lifeguard is not a realistic possibility; the building would close the pool before we paid for that. So I spend most of my swim with an eye on whichever kids are there, because nobody else is doing it.</p>