Pool safety tips for kids?

Fence your pool.
Do not leave furniture or similar close to the fence so your children can use it to access the pool area.
Take your children to ‘learn to swim’ classes from when they are very young.
Do not leave them (or other children) unsupervised even if they’ve been to swimming lessons.
Learn CPR.

Do you know how to teach them to swim? Not just throwing them in but actually teaching them the different techniques.

I was thinking of teaching them to tread water, relax and just back float, and never go to a panicked nonswimmer until they have help. Then be really careful.

A baby fence. Baby fences go immediately around the edge of the pool, so even if your children are playing by the pool, they can’t get into the pool. Regular fences a to keep your neighbor’s children safe.

If you decide against tha fence then get a pool alarm on all doors that lead out to the pool area. The alarm is to be placed high up, an adult should have to reach for it, and it is screaming loud when the door is opened. Adults can push the button on it before opening the door to prevent it from triggering the alarm. If you have doggy doors that lead to the pool area get rid of it while you have small children. A friend of mine’s grandson drowned that way. At least that is what is suspected. They believe he got out that way. He was just a toddler.

Pool rule is the buddy system. No one, not even mommy, swims alone. There must always without exception be a second person in the pool area keeping an eye on each other. Buddies are responsible for each other. If someone goes in the house to go to the bathroom, the other person must get out of the pool temporarily. If your children are very young the rule might be there must be an adult. A friend of mine was having a family party in her backyard and suddenly realized her nephew was nowhere to be found. He was at the bottom of the pool, luckily not long and was easily revived. There were 20 adults present and a few children, but no one was buddied with him.

Make sure your pool has a double drain, or drain that prevents someone from getting sucked down into the drain. When it happens there is no escape. This can happen to adults too. If the water is above an adults head (drains are usually at the deep end) they cannot swim away. It is a malfunction, it is not something you have to regularly be worried about, but the fail safe should be there.

Teach them drownproofing. It’s fine to teach them to swim, and that is, of course a sine qua non for your kids when you have a pool. But take these extra steps to teach them to stay afloat when they are injured or even bound. Not that that’s going to happen, obviously, but still… it’s good to know how to swim when “you can’t”.

Don’t over rely on safety devices like water wings. My daughter got so confidant with her water wings that one time she just jumped in without them. I had 3 kids and didn’t notice immediately until the other kids started screaming. She was alright, we got her out quickly but it could have been a disaster. Always, always, always have eyes on your kids.

This givernment website has a video and a poster among other resources.

When I was little, 6 or 7, we lived in Florida. There was a bay that had salt water canals dug off it it, like spokes on a bike tire. That picture is of my dad, standing in front of our section of the canal. There were a lot of them, and houses were built on either side of them. They were just another part of the neighborhood where we all played. I was the oldest in my family. I had two sisters, 3 and 2. Mom would just turn us lose in the neighborhood. All the neighborhood kids were just turned loose. I was responsible for the “little kids” (my sisters). I will NEVER forget the day my three year old sister fell off the seawall. It’s burned in my mind…the panic. Me running to the house screaming “Lexie fell off the sea wall!” Thank God the tide was out at the time because I probably would have jumped in after her and we both would have drowned. I still feel the horrible guilt of that day.

Another time a friend and I took a little row boat, paddled across the bay to an island that was out there. I think she was a year older than me, so 6 and 7. No life jackets. The island was probably teaming with crocs. But we went there with my folks’ permission and had a picnic. On the way back we got sooo tired. We started to panic a little, so we made it to the nearest canal, and pulled ourselves along the seawall, to the end, to the right, then back out, made it to the next canal, same story. We pulled ourselves through about 5 canals, so tired, so scared and so glad to be home.

As an adult, I look back and I would NEVER, not in a million years, live there if I had little kids!

Parents back then tried to kill their kids in other ways, not just by drowning. Remember the metal skates that you strapped to your shoes? The adjusted in size, but no matter how tightly you keyed them down they ALWAYS flew apart when you hit a bump in the side walk, just as you were hitting top speed (felt like 90 mph!) and throw you into a tree! I saw some at auction last week. Talk about a walk down memory lane. I picked them up. Those suckers were HEAVY, too.

Always have an adult or teenager who is a good swimmer, supervising any swimmers under the age of 12. Don’t allow running around the edge of the pool. Watch out for little ones getting fatigued and have rest times.

Remember, kids drown silently. Even if there adults standing around watching, be vigilant. Kids can drown when people are watching but not paying attention.

Somebody should have told my folks that @Sunny2!

That is SO true @Bellatrix. I remember when my son got in over his head, when he was about 4. I was sitting RIGHT THERE….happened to glance over and he was going down for the 3rd time. Not a sound. I’ll always hear his trembling little voice, muffled against my shoulder, saying, “I couldent even say ‘Mommy.’” Heartbreaking.
Shit that’s scary. Took me forever to get him to get back in. We had to start by getting in the little jacuzzi first. Took about an hour over all, but then he was back in the water and a little wiser.

Well..maybe not much wiser. This was the same year he got into a wreck with a little pond in Wichita and came face to face with the Little Wormaid and SHARKS. He was speechless after seeing all that in the 2 seconds he was under water.

Pool Fence
Pool Alarm
Swim Classes
When children are in the pool always have one person whose ONLY job is to watch them, not read, not talk to other adults, not play.

I have an idea…get rid of the pool!
When we lived in Florida our neighbors had a pool. I pulled my sister, Lexie, out of there a couple of times too.

@Dutchess_III Wow, you have a lot of water incidents don’t you. I loved when I had a pool, I would have one even with children, even with the stories I gave in my first answer. How did your sister get in the neighbors pool? Was there no fence?

Nope. No fence. Actually, if I remember right think it was an indoor pool, but there were no locked doors or anything. We would go over to play with her kids and Lex would just fall in the pool. No one was watching us. This was the early 60’s. People just figured that we’d figure it out on our own, I guess.

@Dutchess_III Not good. Even in the 60’s my mom would not have let me swim without some sort of supervision. Although, if there was a lifeguard she would be fine letting us go to the pool. She would not have felt she needed to be there.

What are the regulations regarding pools in most states in the US?

Here, you have to have a fence of a particular height and style with a gate that locks and a lock that can’t be reached by children, there is an inspection before you can fill the pool. You must display information about how to do CPR and call emergency services. You can’t have furniture near the fence, anything kids can climb up has to be removed. We had a post with an outdoor electricity socket a child could us to boost their height. It had to be moved.

Lexy wasn’t swimming. She was falling in! To this day I wonder what my folks were thinking, buying a house on a canal like that.

@Bellatrix In most if not all states there must be a fence at a minimum height with a gate lock at a certain height. If the fence is made of bars the open space between bars has a minimum width. I would guess there are parts of America where pools have been in for years before the rules that are either grandfathered in, or no one bothers to do anything official to get it changed. Also, instead of a fence you can have a fully screened in pool, the screen doors still must have locks at a certain minimum height.

In some states you must also have either the pool alarms on all doors from the house leading out to the pool or the baby fence. But, the baby fence or alarm are fairly new laws, and people who don’t have them don’t need to get it updated, it’s just when new pools are put in. People who don’t have children, like myself, just take off the alarms once the the pooled is ok’d by the municipality; being able to easiy ut them on if children are vsiting.

Some states also require the double drain to prevent a suction incident.

Your first par sounds very similar to the situation here @JLeslie. Thanks for the info. We aren’t required to have alarms yet. I don’t doubt it could and probably will happen. Even with all these requirements children still drown in backyard pools.

@Bellatrix Most insurance companies won’t write a policy if you don’t have the fence and the gate.

This is a great infographic Pool Safety Infographic made by the company www.pooltoys.com. I’ve printed this out and keep it on my fridge.

Some of the main topics from it are
-Constant Supervision, Correct Barriers, Direct Visibility
-Designated Swimming Pals
-Protect From Sun Damage
-Learn Certified First Aid Skills
-Give Them An Early Start
-No Push, No Shove Rule
-On Boat With Floaters
-The Right Gear
-Keep Dehydration Away

Each have a little cartoon and sentence explaining.