Hey, that’s why they make inflatable pools for your yard. Your kid wades in that until they’re PTed, and then they can go into the public pool.
My understanding of things based on not raising your kid like a savage:
- If you want your kid to not drown, stay with them at all times around pools. 1 in 4 child deaths were from drowning in 2004.
- If your kid isn’t potty-trained, keep them out of the pool.
I think if you follow those two rules, you’ll do fine.
And me as well. The mom from the OP needs to be sent a bill for the havoc her crappy parenting wreaked.
Forgot to add - don’t count on life guards for your young child’s safety, either. A life guard sitting on a high chair watching the whole pool isn’t the same as one parent watching one child.
Baby From Mars is 6 months and is taking swimming lessons, for which she uses the toddler pool, and wears a reusable swim nappy under her bathers. You can also get disposable swim nappies too, although I’ve not used them. They emphasize that babies and toddlers should never be allowed in the water unaccompanied under 5, and restrictions apply over that age (here are the water safety rules for our pool).
I can’t believe this is even an issue. Personally, I don’t go to pools, I usually go to beaches, but seriously, “toilet trained” should be one of the minimum requirements for using a pool.
The policy at our YMCA reads “All swimmers 30 months and younger and all swimmers who wear diapers in the pool are required to wear securely fitting plastic pants over their swim diapers or ‘Swimmies’”
When the system fails, it is referred to as “a fecal incident.”
Most pools round here have special toddler pools for the young folks. Everyone uses the Huggies nappies, and they work just fine for containing poo - that’s what they’re designed for.
My local pool has the same rules as GFM’s. Personally, I think “arms reach if under five” is excessively draconian. The toddler pool is only up to waist level on my four-year-old. But some parents really need to be ridden herd on.
Also, pools may or may not have rules limiting the non-trained toddlers to the toddler pool, and keeping them out of the main pool. Then if an accident does occur, they don’t have to drain and refill much. In my six years of taking toddlers swimming, I have seen this happen maybe three times in total. And none of them involved a whole turd floating out in the open - we’re talking slight wisps of escaping material. Those swim-nappies are really very good.
Kiddy pools for toddlers are about the filthiest germiest places on earth, no matter how fashionable the diaper.
Here, smack in the middle of downtown, there is a big reflecting pool with fountains. A recent heat wave has brought out hundreds of the poor n’ downtrodden with hundreds of their kids in diapers, to caper about in the unchlorinated water like they won a free day at Six Flags. Yeah, wading, pooping, peeing, and drinking the water. There are only office buildings and upscale restaurants around, no public bathrooms. The city had to turn the water off, put up barricades, and are threatening to hand out tickets. It’s a reflecting “pool”, which I guess has confused them, hearing only the second word. There was a beautiful type of water park not unlike this thing that was closed down a few years ago because of e. coli and other germs - hundreds of people got deathly sick from playing around in that water park, which you’d think would have had safety precautions in place.
I should not have opened this thread. I own a pool. It makes me want to tell everybody to go potty before gettin’ in the pool. I should have known better! :eek:
Hey, if you invite us over I’ll dress the Dudeling in a pair of little swimmers then put him in one of those hamster ball contraptions YWalker was referring to.
And that’s just for the barbecue.
I the meantime, I think I’ll start pricing out kiddie pools and looking around at area lakes.
You know it only takes about an inch of water to drown a young child?
That was my thought–they tell you never to leave a small child alone in the bath tub. So leaving one unattended in the pool just seems like a huge accident waiting to happen.
Oh, come on, an infant maybe. A four-year-old kid is not going to just sit there with his face in the water.
It only takes an inch of water to drown anybody.
My biggest beef with the rules is that on the fifth birthday they transition straight from “arms length in the toddler pool” to “can be allowed in the deep end of the main pool with the parent sitting at the side”. Which is just crazy. (and, from this paranoid parent, Not Going To Happen)
That specific rule is totally appropriate for a two-year-old. Verging on over-cautious for a three-year-old. Over the top for a four-year-old. All the rest of them are quite reasonable.
[/pool safety hijack]
But what if the kid falls over and no one notices while they’re drowning, or they hit their head? It just seems like so much can go wrong.
I think more people die in empty pools than full ones. 
Whatever you like - it’s not my kid.
Kids and pools just do not mix. The hubs and I were thinking of putting an above ground pool in our backyard, but opted against it until after we have kids and they’re older. Don’t wanna have to deal with that worry.
Yeah, I know that’s what happened in the movie Caddyshack…but anybody that knows anything about how a pool works, would understand that draining the pool is not neccesary.
You would remove the offending matter from the water, and shock the pool. People would need to be out of the pool for about 4-6 hours. The chlorine in the water is there to kill bacteria…including the bacteria in shit.