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Summer Safety for Preschoolers – Drowning Prevention
Imagine the scenario. Your family is spending the afternoon in a yacht on the lake. Your preschooler has thrown a temper tantrum for some reason or another and so you decide to put him down for a nap in the lower compartment. You remove his life jacket and tuck him in. Just to be safe, you wait with him until he falls asleep. Thirty minutes later you find him floating face down in the water. He’d awoken, crept back upstairs, and fallen over the side of the boat without your knowledge.
A rare tragedy? Unfortunately not. Of all the children who died in 2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 26% of them died from drowning.
The hard truth is that accidental drowning is preventable. Because preschoolers are carefree, curious, and adventurous, adults must be responsible. Water and unsupervised children don’t mix (and by unsupervised, I mean adults who turn their heads for less than a minute).
The following recommendations are based on CDC prevention tips:
- Avoid distraction when your preschooler is in water (i.e., don’t read a magazine, talk on the phone, wear headphones, water the roses, etc.)
- Learn CPR. Check your local hospital, community college or YMCA for CPR courses. You can even earn your CPR certificate online. CPRToday.com is one example.
- Learn to swim.
- Never substitute water toys and other flotation devices for life jackets.
- If you own your own swimming pool, install a protective fence around your pool area. See the CDC prevention tips for specifications.
- When you’re done swimming, put away water toys and flotation devices that might tempt preschoolers.
- Be sure your preschooler (and you) wear United States Coast Guard approved life jackets when in any boat on any body of water.
- If at the beach, steer clear of choppy, foamy, discolored, or debris-filled water.
Most importantly, never take your eyes off your preschooler when around water, whether it’s the bathtub, swimming pool, lake, or ocean. That phone call or suspense novel just isn’t worth it.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Water-Related Injuries: Fact Sheet” Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention www.cdc.gov 11 April 2007. Retrieved 19 May 2007.
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