We all like to think the best of people we love. Sometimes, this can make us a bit too confident in their ability to do something with ease. Take our kids’ swimming ability, for example. To swim well, they need children’s swimming lessons from experienced instructors, who teach swimming strokes in a way that improves water safety for kids.
Parents know this, but the pride we take in our kids’ talent makes it easy to think they already possess what amounts to a child’s version of swimming mastery. This is a dangerous assumption that can increase their risk of drowning, if they happen to encounter swimming situations that they aren’t ready to handle yet — or at least not as well as we might think.
5 Reasons Why Swim Lessons are Essential
With summer in the air, many families will spend time in sun-warmed swimming pools, and exploring vacation destinations that have scenic shorelines. It’s also a season when kids of all ages tend to be invited to pool parties.. Have your kids taken children’s swimming lessons that help to ensure their safety in these situations?
If not, here are five reasons why well-taught swimming lessons are essential for the water safety of kids, including your own kids — even if they are truly more talented than most other children at nearly everything they do.
1. Drowning is a Leading Cause of Death Among Children
When we think of human mortality, we typically think of adults, who die from advanced age or something primarily related to adults, such as car accidents. But, when it comes to drowning, children are a major risk group. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “About one in five people who die from drowning are children 14 and younger.”
Not all of the deaths result from lack of swimming ability. However, considering that many children drown in swimming pools, swimming ability — which is often revealed by a lack of swimming pool safety that puts kids in dangerous situations — is a common variable.
The sooner your kids receive children’s swimming lessons, the safer they will be in outdoor pools this summer, as well as indoor swimming pools that they enjoy during the cold season.
2. Swimming is a Notable Cause of Injury Among Children
In addition to helping prevent unintentional drownings, children’s swimming lessons help deter non-fatal, water-related injuries that send kids to the emergency room. According to the CDC, “For every child who dies from drowning, another five receive emergency department care for nonfatal submersion injuries.”
The CDC also specifies the nature and complications of “submersion injuries”, explaining that, “These nonfatal drowning injuries can cause severe brain damage that may result in long-term disabilities, such as memory problems, learning disabilities, and permanent loss of basic functioning (e.g., permanent vegetative state).”
While strong swimming ability is not a cure all for water-related injuries, it helps deter them. If your kids haven’t received swim lessons, summer is a perfect time to sign them up. The availability of outdoor pools, where lessons can be taught, means children’s swimming lessons are typically the most available in summer.
3. Swimming can Enable Us to Save the Lives of Others
The main reason to have kids take children’s swimming lessons is to help them save their own lives, in case they encounter a situation where swimming ability is a predictor of survival. However, the same swimming knowledge that can save children’s lives can also help them save the lives of others, at some point in the future.
There have been plenty of situations where a person saw that someone was in danger of drowning, then entered the water to save the individual, and ended up drowning, too. Attempting to save others’ lives is something we tend to do instinctively. When the situation involves rescuing someone from drowning, knowing how to swim well helps ensure that no one dies, preventing the occurrence of a double tragedy where both people perish.
4. Swimming Promotes a Lifetime of Health and Fitness
The most essential reasons for investing in children’s swimming lessons is increasing water safety for kids to deter drowning and serious injuries. But swim lessons are also essential for promoting kids’ health and fitness by encouraging them to adopt swimming as a fitness activity.
Organizations that focus on health and fitness often consider swimming one of the healthiest fitness activities. The YMCA explains, “Swimming is one of the absolute best forms of exercise, as it works every muscle group in the body without putting stress on bones and joints. Especially for children, it is a great way to burn off pent-up energy.”
As an exercise, swimming is unique. Because it involves the relaxing pleasure of being in water, it’s not a “no pain, no gain” type of exercise. This increases the likelihood of people adopting it as lifelong exercise routine that helps sustain good health. The healthy habit starts with learning to swim, which ideally begins with receiving children’s swimming lessons.
In addition to increasing water safety for kids, swim lessons help prepare them for a life of health and fitness, which can begin in childhood and extend throughout adulthood.
5. Promotes Social Enrichment Through Water Activities
Humans are more than “social animals” by preference, who crave positive interaction with others. We actually need this type of interaction to sustain peak health. By learning how to swim, we increase opportunities to experience it by being able to safely, confidently participate in a variety of socially enriching water activities.
Citing “life skill” as a “swim lesson benefit”, the YMCA says, “Swimming is an important skill that will bring a lifetime of enjoyable experiences. From boat trips, to beaches, to pools … these experiences require the ability to swim … as your child gets older, they could find themselves excluded from such activities if they are unable to swim.”
Because social enrichment is essential for health, and because water activities can facilitate it, children’s swimming lessons can be considered “essential” within this context. If you need a place that offers well-taught swim lessons for kids, the YMCA offers them year round.
Conclusion
At what point does the confidence we have in our kids become “overconfidence” that puts them in danger by expecting them to do too much? When it comes to water safety for kids, at least one of the answers is clear: overconfidence arrives at the point of believing children can swim like “pros”, so to speak, when they haven’t received swim lessons to justify the belief.
As a business that cares deeply about the safety of kids, A Safe Pool encourages you to have your children take swimming lessons. If you have small children, and your home has a pool, we also encourage you to increase their water safety by implementing one of our pool safety barriers, which reduces drowning risk for small children. Contact us today to schedule a free estimate.
