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Americans drowning: What can we do?
It happened twice this past week. One of my pet peeves came across the cable feed on two separate occasions, and as always, it got me yelling at the television. On “House Hunters”, another couple passed on buying a beautiful house at a great price, because the woman was pregnant, and the couple was afraid about the pool because of the safety issues with the baby, so they passed. My reaction? “You stupid freakin' idiots!” Children drowning in home pools is a very real problem, and it takes many young lives, but it’s the wrong reaction, because it is not the pool that kills the children, but the irresponsible adults around the pool. It’s not the child’s mistake to fall in the water, it’s the adults who don’t make it child-proof, don’t take the time to teach their children to swim, and don’t pay attention at all times when there are children in or near the water. Then over the weekend, in his pre-race interview, U.S. Olympic swimmer Cullen Jones mentioned his commitment to promoting teaching children how to swim, with a focus on minority children who are victims of accidental drowning at 3 times the rate of white children. As a former swimming instructor and lifeguard, Mr. Jones hit a deep chord. It’s the same problem, but from two different perspectives, people of all ages are drowning to death, but there are many viewpoints and solutions, and unless we change how we view water, the deaths will continue. The statistics hold the key. Drowning is the 4th leading cause of accidental death in the United States, and still claims around 4,000 lives per year. Approximately one third of those drowning, are by children under the age of 14. Drowning is the 2nd leading cause of accidental death in children 15 and younger, and children under 5 years of age, and between ages 15 to 24, have the highest accidental drowning rates by age group. 19% of drowning accidents in children occur in public swimming pools with lifeguards on duty, and 70% of all preschoolers who drown are in the care of both parents at the time, and 75% are missing from sight for 5 minutes or less. The chance of drowning in natural water settings increases with age. Most drowning in individuals over 15 years of age occurs in natural water settings. Many of these are people who are not swimmers, drawn to a pond, a lake, a river, the ocean, whether it is in or on the water, adults not taking the proper precautions around water, and getting in over their heads. The statistics are sobering, and at this time in history, shameful. There are two reasons for these horrible statistics, lack of instruction in how to swim as well as lack of instruction in water and boating safety, and a laxness in properly and soundly restricting access to dangerous water. Restricting access for children, and the proper measure of adult commonsense, responsibility and vigilance around the water. Learning to swim should not be a luxury it should be a community and parental priority, with a comprehensive effort to teach 100% of our children to swim. Secondly, all pool owners, and especially parents with children and pools, must seriously address the safety issues concerned with owning a pool, and how to keep it safe, with children in the house and neighborhood. Then they must be ever vigilant about anyone and everyone that has access to the pool area, 24 hours a day. Proper safety controls such as sturdy and child-proof fencing to restrict access should be required as part of the city building codes for anyone building a maintaining a pool on their property. Finally, boaters, surfers, divers, beach goers, and everyone else around the water needs to be educated and practice sound water safety. It sounds like a lot of work, and unnecessary responsibility and liability when it would be so much easier to just not have a pool, but swimming pools can enrich peoples’ lives, and bring families and neighborhoods together in a healthy activity. If children are exposed to the water in a safe environment, and taught how to swim and enjoy the water safely, they grow up to be adults who are more likely to respect the water and practice sensible water activities, in that sense, pools can help keep adults safer in and around the water too. The fact that this problem still exists at such magnitude can be partly explained by the time factor. Parents are so strapped for time, between work and raising a family. In many households both adults work, and the struggle to juggle a full time work schedule, while at the same time giving the amount of attention their children need to learn skills and responsibility is difficult to provide. Consequently, any time-saving aids are welcomed and child care is often handed over to objects such as television, video games, and in the case of swimming and playing in the pool, floats replace swimming lessons and proper supervision. Aside from a properly secured life-vest, floats which require the user to hold-on are one of the most dangerous and most irresponsible articles you can give a non-swimmer. Instead of teaching survival in the water by learning what to do when you go under water, floats act as a false crutch in keeping the non-swimmer’s head above water, and the user never learns how to breathe in the water. But the most dangerous aspect of hold-on floats is that they encourage non-swimmers to go into water over their heads, while running the risk of losing their grasp on the float. Arm floats are just as dangerous because they also severely hamper the learning of proper breathing methods. They can also be removed by the child, the child can accidentally slip out of them. But even more dangerous, they teach the child to be attracted by to the water, and we encourage and support how well they are "swimming", without teaching them how to survive in the water without their arm floats. As long as we continue to view water safety as a recreational luxury which is treated as an “at your own risk” type of activity, and until we treat swimming and water safety as a community and national priority, we will continue to lose our children to drowning. And in doing so, we will continue to lose too many people who have the potential to shape the future of our nation. We as individuals can take responsibility for the problem, and either act, or throw the problem a float, and hope we don't drown. William S. James, Treading water. |
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Site to promote Freedom Zone fz2878
www.fz2878.com
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Yes, more time nurturing our children in basic skills and activities is a lot less costly than buying that new - whatever they keep on begging for. Keeps kids active, healthy, competitive, values, motivated and out of trouble.
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