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Summer's Arrival Brings Concerns About Water Safety
and Kids
With the Memorial Day weekend, many of the
nation's pools and beaches are now open - or will be
open before too long. And with those openings comes
the annual concern about protecting children from
the hazards of being in or near water. |
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Those hazards
present themselves in an instant and - more often
than not - while parents or other adults were
momentarily diverted by something else. "In many of
the drownings we see, the parent or caretaker was
distracted by something seemingly important like a
telephone call and, as a result, a child was left
alone in the bay, lake, pool or bathtub," says Dr.
Joan Shook, the chief of emergency medicine
at Houston's Texas Children's Hospital. "By
the time the child was found, a significant amount
of time had elapsed." |
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A hospital statement says
that about 385 children drown or nearly drown each day, with the
majority of those incidents occurring between Memorial Day and
Labor Day. About 70% of the preschoolers who drowned last year
were being supervised by one or more adults when the incident
occurred. Shook doesn't think teaching kids to swim at a young
age is a helpful way to avoid tragedy. "It is an illusion that
you can teach children to swim before they are capable of
learning how to stay out of danger," she says. "Developmentally,
children are not prepared for the elaborate coordination
required to swim until close to age five, about the time they
learn to ride a bike."
For kids age 4 and under, Shook says that parents should
never leave their kids alone near any size body of water from a
bucket to the ocean. She also suggests that parents learn
cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR. "The likelihood of
permanent disability increases with every second a child is not
breathing," she says. "So while parents or caregivers are
waiting for the paramedics, they should begin CPR."
Shook says that children between the ages of 5 and 12 should
be taught to swim and taught the proper safety rules for
swimming in pools or at beaches. They also should use
appropriate floatation devices when on a boat, and should use
caution when jumping or diving into water.
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