Water Safety Tips

• Teach children water safety and swimming skills as early as possible.
• Always brief babysitters on water safety, emphasizing the need for constant supervision.
• Appoint a “designated watcher” to monitor children during social gatherings at or near pools.
• Equip doors and windows that exit to a pool area with alarms.
• Install a poolside phone, preferably a cordless model, with emergency numbers programmed into speed-dial.
• Post CPR instructions and learn the procedures. Keep rescue equipment poolside. Don’t wait for the paramedics to arrive because you will lose valuable life-saving seconds. Four to six minutes without oxygen can cause permanent brain damage or death.
• Keep a first aid kit at poolside.
• Install four-sided isolation fencing, at least five feet high, equipped with self-closing and self-latching gates, that completely surrounds the pool and prevents direct access from the house and yard.
• Maintain constant visual contact with children in a pool or pool area.
• If a child is missing, check the pool first; seconds count in preventing death or disability.
• Don’t use flotation devices as a substitute for supervision.
• Never allow a young child in a pool without an adult.
• Don’t leave objects such as toys that might attract a child in the pool and pool area.
• Never prop the gate to a pool area open.
• Don’t rely on swimming lessons, life preservers, or other equipment to make a child “water safe.”
• Never assume someone else is watching a child in a pool area.
• Don’t leave chairs or other items of furniture where a child could use them to climb into a fenced pool area.
• Don’t think you’ll hear a child who’s in trouble in the water; child drowning is a silent death, with no splashing to alert anyone that the child is in trouble.

Should Your Child Take Swimming Lessons?

• Can your child roll over, float on his/her back, and yell for help?
  (This is the most important technique children can use to protect themselves from drowning while alerting others to their danger.)
• Does your child take refresher swimming classes every year?
  (Rapidly changing skills, different levels of development, and a limited attention span require that a child’s swimming abilities be continually updated.)
• Can your child swim above water?
  (Children need to know how to swim on top of the water to get adequate air and to find their way to safety.)