One of the most valuable gifts you can offer your child is the ability to swim. It not only helps your baby’s mobility develop, but it also improves brain functions and provides other health benefits. More significantly, it’s a fantastic way for you and your child to bond.
Allowing your child to swim as soon as possible reduces their fear of the water, which can help them avoid mishaps as they grow older. Because of their experience in the womb, babies can readily learn to swim.
If you want to teach your child to swim, you need to take the essential precautions to ensure that the experience is both safe and pleasurable. Apart from enrolling in a swimming school, the following information will provide important swimming safety guidelines to remember.
Why Is Water Safety Important?
Baby swim classes are not suggested until after the baby turns one year old, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, because there is presently no evidence that infant swim programs reduce the risk of drowning.
If your child is at least one month old, you can expose them to a clean outdoor swimming pool having koi pond filtering systems on your own.
Rather than relying on just one of the tactics listed below, use a combination of them. Adding more safeguards assures no mistakes.
Water Safety Tips For Babies
- Stay close: Experts recommend always being close enough to lay a hand on your child. Keep them within reach and on the lookout. Even in small amounts of water, babies can drown.
- Be cautious of inflatable pools: Leaning forward and falling headfirst into these soft-sided water areas is easy for a toddler. Carefully supervise empty smaller pools after usage, and keep large dunking pools fenced off.
- Get some reading done: Experts recommend that parents have CPR and basic water safety training. The American Heart Association or the American Red Cross can provide you with training.
- Floaties aren’t necessary: The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both advise against using air-filled swim aids. They give the impression of security, but they are readily pierced or deflated.
- It’s fenced in: According to Dr. Weiss, your home swimming pool should be encircled by four-sided fencing that is at least four feet high and has a childproof gate.
- Defer classes for another 12 months: For children under the age of one year, the AAP does not advocate formal water safety programs.
Discover the Hidden Dangers of Open Water
When diving in open water, enter with your feet first and slowly wade in. Things like pebbles, logs, uneven surfaces, and rapid drop-offs in open water might be difficult to see at times. If there are lifeguards on duty, inquire about the safest swimming area.
Look for indicators of water depth, distances, and abrupt drop-offs. Unlike a pool, open water rarely has depth indicators, making it difficult for parents to tell when their children are entering deeper water. In addition, open water typically includes longer distances than a pool, and knowing how far away the coast is can be difficult.
Open water can be unexpected and fast-moving. Due to changes beneath the water’s surface, water in rivers, creeks, and streams continuously flows downstream, causing strong currents.
Be aware of rip currents and ocean waves. A rip current is a long, narrow swath of water that can quickly sweep a swimmer away from the beach and out into the ocean. Make sure you know how to spot, avoid, and deal with rip currents in the ocean.
Before leaving home with all the important stuff in your fingerprint safes and during the day, check the weather as well as water conditions. When lightning is present, swimming, boating, personal watercraft, and sailing/surfboarding are all unsafe activities. If you hear thunder or see lightning, stay out of the water. Flooding and heavy rains can cause strong currents that change the depth and purity of the water quickly.
Swimming ability is influenced by water temperature. Even for strong swimmers, falling into cold water can produce cold shock, making swimming difficult. To avoid drowning, consider to dress for the water temperature rather than the air temperature and to use a life jacket.
Water Games for Babies
You can take out your little one from her warm and cozy wholesale pram and enjoy some water activities to entertain. The four games listed below will both delight and educate your child:
- Motorboat Legs
Gently drag your baby’s feet around in the water at an angle. What’s the advantage? They’ll begin to kick and become accustomed to the sensation of water resistance.
- Follow The Leader
Babies enjoy imitating their parents. It’s perfectly normal. So plunge your nose or dip your toes in the water. Your activities may encourage your tadpole to experiment with new things.
- First Stroke
Would you like to get your child to move around? Place a rubber duckie just beyond of reach and entice them into grabbing it and pulling it toward them, all while holding them from behind. This, like motorboat legs, teaches your child a crucial swimming technique: stroke-like actions.
- Tummy Time
Place the infant on their stomach on a foam mat and rock back and forth. This will allow them to strengthen their back and neck while also allowing them to feel safe when floating.
