Friday was a big day in the Heck household!! This little lady graduated from Aquatic Survival Instruction (ASI) (and earned her very first trophy!)
I decided to enroll her in this program for two reasons:
- I saw my best friend’s kids go through the program and loved their results. Her 2-year-old son (at the time) was so confident in water and could find his float easily. This was a big draw for me.
- All the recent drowning stories I’ve heard. Did you hear about Bode Miller’s daughter? If you didn’t, click here. This is so heartbreaking. I can’t imagine having to cope with such a devastating loss… especially if I knew there was a way to prevent it.
With swim classes and these stories of drowning on my mind, I took a deeper look at this issue. What I found out was hard to believe:
According to the CDC, drowning is responsible for more deaths in children aged 1-4 than any other cause outside of birth defects. In those same aged children, drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional injury-related death behind car crashes (See complete fact sheet here).
In fact, after some deeper digging, I found out drowning was actually the leading cause of unintentional death in children aged 1-4 from 2015-2016… say what?!
(I wanted to link to the actual chart, but I can’t so you can find it by searching from this site)
As mommas, we spend so much time worried about breastfeeding vs. formula, organic vs. regular produce, sleep schedules, feeding schedules, the best car seats, the best strollers, the safest toys… yet, in my experience, it doesn’t seem like we think nearly as much about how safe our kids are around water. Yes, floaties or life jackets often keep us feeling safe… but sometimes things happen so fast you don’t get the chance to use them.
For us, this issue has been at the forefront of our minds. With a lake and pool nearby, we spent a lot of time near the water. Our little lady is – and will be – a water baby. While that’s awesome, we already see how serious we need to take that. Nothing drove this point home to me earlier, or more seriously, than seeing my baby girl decide she was going to crawl out of her floatie in the lake with over 20 feet of water below her. Luckily, we were right there and resolved that problem quickly… but what if our 9-year-old had asked us something and our heads were turned? What if we were on the dock and someone bumped into her near the edge? This event gave rise to a stream of what if, what if, what if thoughts in my mind… I knew right away we needed to get her enrolled.
If you don’t have regular access to water, you may not think about these things as much… or ever… and my doctor has NEVER MENTIONED IT. Granted, a pediatrician has so many things to talk to you about at your appointments, so I get it. But this is one of the leading causes of death! How could this not come up? I may have been asked on a checklist, one time, whether we have a pool nearby… But no one spoke to me about it and no one suggested we bring our child to swim lessons. We got a book about not letting our kid watch too much TV, but swim lessons? Crickets. Why are we not telling parents about this? There are charts in the office about car seat safety… but nothing about swimming pools?! WTH???
So, enter ASI.
Ok… I gotta be real here… even after research to dig up all the info above and seeing how great my friend’s kids were in the water, I still really struggled to keep her in the lessons once we started. Not because she screamed the whole time, not because she was one of the school’s more challenging students (she was!!), not because I felt like they weren’t the best equipped school for her to be in… but because it killed me to see my child suffering. Her angry screams I can handle, her separation anxiety I can handle… but coming home and having my child vomit water all over our kitchen and refuse to eat because she had swallowed SO MUCH pool water was really terrifying for me.
I scoured the internet for dry drowning symptoms (she never had a single one of them) and panicked during her afternoon naps, worried she’d start to drown in her sleep (also never happened).
The staff at Gwinnett Swim (where we went for lessons) were so awesome. They added instructors to her lesson, the owner sat with me and talked about her progress, they used a pacifier to try to keep her mouth shut (I wonder if that will work when she is a teenager??), created new ways of instructing her, and so on. I mean, they were really AMAZING.
And still, some days, I wondered whether I was doing the right thing by continuing to bring her to something so difficult.
And then one day, it clicked. She realized that if she just rolled to her back and sat still, she wouldn’t have water in her face… and from that point on, it all changed. Since then, she has been a little rockstar. She still screams bloody murder when she sees her instructor, realizes that Mom is about to leave, and recognizes she is about to get dunked underwater, but none of that keeps her from practicing her skills like a little angel.
(ok, maybe angel was a bit of a stretch, but a Mom can dream right?) In fact, she even earned a star student of the week award! Of course, she is crying in her award photo… but hey, I’ll take a win where I can! Oh and speaking of wins… she stopped getting sick about a quarter of the way through her lessons, Woop Woop!!
And her test? I mean, she killed it. The kid got pulled into the water… found her float… pushed under water… found her float… had a wet shirt placed on her face… pulled it off and found her float. No help, no support. And not much of a peep from her. Just one hand behind that sweet little head of hers, floating away and waiting for someone to come rescue her.
At that moment, I realized that regardless of how hard it was to get her here, regardless of the time and financial commitment, regardless of the days she got sick… it was absolutely, 100% worth every stressful moment of the process.
So, Momma’s, if you haven’t been thinking about this… please do. It could literally be a life or death decision at some point. I realize that may sound dramatic, but if you were to talk to a parent that has lost a child to accidental drowning, you’d know it’s not dramatic at all. And believe me, I know you have so much on your plate and committing to getting your infant or toddler to swim lessons multiple days a week can be a huge pain in the butt…
But, heaven forbid, your child goes to a family member’s or friend’s house where there is a pool, and heaven forbid, someone turns around to do something or check their phone for a couple seconds… life will never, ever be the same.
If you live in north Georgia, I can not recommend Gwinnett Swim enough. Bonus points, they are in the process of building a new facility, so I imagine the experience with them is just going to get better and better. Check them out here!
And, as always, stay Healthy as Heck! KH