In a rash of child drownings, even summer’s end is a prime time for learning to swim
With summer winding down, chances are high that most parents aren’t thinking about swimming lessons for their kids. But any time is a good time to help your child protect himself or herself in the water — especially in view of Houston’s recent rash of child drownings.
After a 15-month-old boy drowned when he climbed into a bathtub Aug. 3, already this year Houston has had more child drownings — 25 — than in all of 2007 combined — 22.
Children drown for many reasons, including improperly maintained, supervised and illuminating swimming pools. But as a reader who wrote to this blog has stressed, many such drownings could have been prevented if the child simply knew how to swim properly.
That doesn’t mean your child has to be as good of a swimmer as multiple Olympic gold medal winner Michael Phelps, who continues to dazzle at the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China. But it does mean that your child can get a head start on swimming ability and, thus, swimming safety.
From the end of summer and on through fall and winter and then next spring, there’s no bad time for a child to learn such a vital skill as swimming. Indeed, when it may mean the difference between life and death for a child, safety has no off-season. Instead, safety always matters.
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[...] that, with small children, it doesn’t take much to cause a tragedy, whether in the home, at a pool or in or around an [...]