Zoe, that video was not a Y or Red Cross-type class.
My claim about the false confidence (and therefore the danger) has to do with that quote from the Dad, about the possibility of his kid falling into the lake this summer w/out her life jacket. A scenario where it’s possible for a kid to fall into the water w/out a life jacket has too much risk built into it from the get-go! The point of drowning prevention is system redundancy (fences, PLUS pool covers, PLUS locks), not “fixing” the child. Because children are unpredictable. Over half of the parents in the drowning study had seriously overrated their child’s swimming ability.
I agree with the experts - I believe that little kids (2-yr-olds, for example) have to be within an arm’s reach when they’re at or near water. I’ve seen my kids get in distress in a flash. This year they were old enough to follow my orders, “STAY WITH ME”, but last summer we couldn’t go to the pool at all unless I had a second adult to help me.
I say that, though, as a landlocked Midwesterner, for whom avoidance and control are options. If you lived on a beach or lake, you’d no doubt have a vastly different relationship with water. I can’t speak to that because I don’t know anything about it. I’ve seen little bitty 'uns who could swim, absolutely. Some of them are VERY much at home in the water. Where they got it, I don’t know.
Can’t find the post right now, but I think you guys made a really valid point about kids sinking silently, I had no idea they could do that. Teaching them to thrash and call out sounds like an excellent idea.
Lightray, I had the same irritation with gymnastics and soccer classes at the Y this summer. The kids who couldn’t stand in line and wait their turn were so disruptive that nothing could be taught. Not that I was expecting them to really learn more than a forward roll, but still it was annoying to have paid $$ to watch their kids run around the room like their asses were on fire.
My kids were OK with following the rules, at least to start - after a couple of weeks they started goofing off too. I think it’s because they’d had a year of preschool already, where they also grew accustomed to listening to their Teacher and doing things without Mommy present. You betcha that was painful at first, but having me there would merely have prolonged the agony.
When the soccer and gymnastics classes were finished, I suggested to the Director of our Y that a “Come Play” class would make more sense as an intro, just give the kids a chance to burn off some steam and be part of some team play, learn to wait their turn, without trying to learn a particular sport or skills. She loved the idea.
At any rate, I don’t think the scenario you describe is specific to water.
outliern, in my mind’s eye it looked like this font that says this (which isn’t precisely what I mentioned):
I could’ve sworn there was more, but I can’t find it right now. Perhaps it was a mental edit on my part. Your question about kids drowning after following a “survival program” hasn’t been answered, as far as I can tell. The cite I gave earlier stated that 24-30% (varies by age) of kids who drowned in the sample year knew how to swim. But in that study no child under 4 knew how to swim.
Wow, Marienee, you weren’t kidding. Apparently there was a World Conference on Drowning, presented in the Netherlands. It would be interesting if that document included posters or presentations from the meeting.