Swim Safety Gone Overboard at YMCA

Here is the reason why they made this decision; “They can practice during swim lessons, of course—but those cost money in addition to the membership.”

Their decision has nothing to do with safety but everything to do with taking more money from the parents.

Simple cover our ass so we do not get sued ruling. And if it is implemented in one location, it won’t be long before it is state wide, then nation wide.

Was a NLS cert. lifeguard, taught lifeguards, taught swimming, competed as a lifeguard for the town of Pickering. We had two town pools at the time, and never had a swim test for anyone coming in for public swimming.

The only rules we had about PFD’s were that the only ones used were the ones we supplied, and not off the high boards.

Lawyers and administrators are sucking the life out of life. I really feel sorry for the generations to come, and how little life they will actually be allowed to experience.

What happened to the old lakes and rivers? Or too much real sense of real danger?

Our YMCA says kids under 8 have to have a parent in the pool with them, but they leave the floatie issue up to the parent.
I agree, it’s impossible to learn to swim with a life jacket. Our YMCA has these floaties that strap to your back of varying degrees. As the kid gets stronger/more confident, you can reduce the size of the floatie until they don’t need it at all.
If I were krista, I’d cancel my membership, state why, and leave. I go to the pool to have fun with my kids and help them learn to swim. This makes the learning to swim impossible. Summer’s here. I bet there are some good outdoor pools.

lullia- Not everyone has easy access to clean lakes or rivers. I did, but the pool was within walking distance, while the lake. My friends and I would frequently walk there by ourselves to hang out on summer afternoons or weekends. The only rule was that we had to go with a friend, not by ourselves. I also started learning how to swim around when I learned how to walk. I hated putting my head under, but my dad taught me how to float on my back. This probably did more for my safety than anything like the YMCA policy, and I plan on teaching our kids how to swim as early as possible. There is nothing better for water safety than being a strong swimmer, and you don’t get to be a strong swimmer without plenty of unencumbered time in the water.

As Natalie said: Cancel membership, and tell them why. Ask for a refund of your membership fee from the time of cancellation, since you are cancelling because they changed the terms of the contract.

I agree, cancel membership and go somewhere else. There has to be other pools around. Many fitness centers have pools as well.
I also believe it is about the money, Lessons are expensive.
I learned to swim by my father throwing me in a deep pool many years ago.

I stand corrected (already)…it looks like the policy for my YMCA is similar, but they do offer different “levels” of swim tests and only list a PFD (personal flotation device) as what the the child has to wear if they can’t pass one of the swim tests.

I think it has more to do with them pushing everyone into swimming lessons (more money! ka-ching! ) than with safety or fear of lawsuits, etc. – after all, there could be waivers or disclaimers instead.

Our Y has the same policy and it’s infuriating! You can’t learn to swim with a life jacket on. I taught lessons for years and that’s about as basic as it gets. But alas, our Y also “teaches” kids to “swim” while wearing a bubble which also doesn’t work which is why they have kids in lessons, still wearing bubbles, when they’re 6 years old with 5 1/2 years of lessons under their (bubble) belt. I took my swimming business elsewhere because, frankly, the Y is just too big to take on. I think more than anything they are terrified of getting sued and will never change the policy simply because they are covering their asses.

I have to be the dissenting voice here. I worked as a lake ranger for several years, and worked plenty of drownings. I am as free range as they come in most ways, but I made both of my children wear life jackets in the pool until they could swim well enough to swim one length of the pool without assistance. I honestly don’t feel this rule is that unreasonable. Our school district, our parks and recreation department, and our local Y all offer swim lessons for about $35 a session. We have plenty of those boutique swim schools who charge $$$, but my daughter learned very well from our parks and recreation lessons, and my son learned how to swim through Special Olympics.

Are there any other rec centers you can take your kid too? Where I am (suburbs) we have a YMCA, a city rec center, and other communities have their own rec centers as well, all with pools. I’d be pulling my membership so fast it’s not even funny. You can’t teach a kid to swim with a life jacket on.

The Y where we are member just introduced this policy. It’s infuriating. Life jacket PLUS “within arms reach of parent” for EVERYONE who can’t swim the length of the pool. I have 8 children. I am also not an octopus. I’ve talked to the aquatics director twice, about how kids can’t learn to swim with a life jacket, and our whole reason for joining the Y was so that I could teach them to swim. They have lessons, but the is NO WAY we can afford to put the children in lessons- membership alone is a stretch for our budget! The director assures me that their insurance company has required the change and that there is nothing she can do. Meanwhile, allthe kids whose parents *can* afford swim lessons laugh at my 5, 7, & 8 year olds who have to wear life jackets. Not to mention that now my 8 year old is now terrified of taking off her life jacket because it holds her so high in the water & she’s afraid she’ll “suddenly drown” if she takes it off. We plan to break the rules and teach the children the best I can, until I find another pool we can afford.

Are you sure that the lifeguard is not mistaken? Our ymca (ottawa canada), the rule is under 8, they need to wear the lifejacket if they want to go in the pool on their own. Not when they are with a parent, unless there are more kids than 1 parent to 2 kids.

Wow, that is insane. If I remember correctly, the swim supervision rules for our YMCA are:

KIDS UNDER SIX: Must be supervised by a parent or guardian at a 1:2 ratio, within arm’s reach, in the shallow end. Non-swimmers must wear life jackets/PFD’s, and be supervised at a ratio of 1:9

KIDS AGE 6-9: Must be supervised by a parent or guardian in the water, not within arm’s reach, but within constant visual contact.

KIDS 10 and up: May swim unaccompanied, but parents must remain in the YMCA if the child is under 12 (I think).

ALL KIDS: Must be able to pass a swimming test (not sure what that entails) in order to use the deep end and the diving board. Also, I think the “non-swimmers must wear PFD’s” rule only applies if the child is too short to stand up in the shallow end with their head above water.

However, I think “kids” just means 12 and under at our YMCA, because at 13, you’re allowed to participate in lane swim and “adult” fitness classes, and use the cardio and weights rooms as well. The only difference between 13-to-15’s and adults is, they aren’t allowed in the adult change rooms, but I started using the women’s change room when I was 14 or so, because A) My entire Bronze Cross class did, and B) This was before the family change room was built, and I was fed up with little boys prancing around the girls’ change room and gawking at me.

Anyway, one more point–when I was a kid taking swimming lessons, we were always told to come to free swim (and, when I got older, lane swim) to practice what we’d learned in our lessons, on our own time. Whatever happened to that?

Yeah, that seems excessive. My mother-in-law said something about how Little Man (2.5 years) will have to wear a vest at the pool and we don’t like that. He has a suit with a built-in flotation that keeps his head above water and he’s used to it (it’s what he wears here at home in our pool). It’s going to be interesting when we go back home to Wisconsin.

Frankly, it sounds like another way for the Y to make money as well as hiding from potential lawsuits. What’s the point of a lifeguard or four if you’re making parents be lifeguards, too?

This is one of the many many times I wish we could create a legally binding “I’m Not Going to Sue” card for people to offer in response to these ridiculous rules. That would allow organizations like the Y to let you opt out of these regulations if you sign an INGtS card, but still allow overly-cautious types to enjoy the bubble wrap.

(I first conceived of this idea when I was pregnant with my first child and developed a minor but painful infection, the details of which I will not enumerate. When I called my OB to make an appointment to deal with this, I asked the nurse on call if I could take an over-the-counter medication that I knew from previous experience would help alleviate the symptoms. I was told I could do nothing but drink lots of water. When I finally made it to my doctor, she prescribed me the higher-strength prescription version of the very medication I could have purchased over the counter. I know the nurse was in cover-her-ass mode, but I was in pain, darn it, and I just wanted to know if the meds would make my child grow flippers or something. If I could have used an INGtS card, I could have felt a great deal better much sooner).

I didn’t read all the comments but I have an easy solution, don’t go there anymore.

Once they lose all their clients they might get a clue.

Sorry people are so silly!

“This is one of the many many times I wish we could create a legally binding “I’m Not Going to Sue” card for people to offer in response to these ridiculous rules. ”

And what do you do when the insurance seeks to recoup the money spent on hospital treatment? Tell them to take it from you, because you won’t sue?

Most of those cases are your insurance suing their insurance – not Emily suing the local Y because she’s a money grubber.

Well, Uly, if we’re talking about wish-fulfillment solutions, then maybe special, higher-cost insurance policies with riders that don’t permit the insurance company to sue if a waiver that meets a certain legal standard has been signed, would fix that.

It seems there’s GOT to be a way to return sanity to institutional policies about stuff like this, even if actually getting it implemented is a pipe dream.

@Iuliia “What happened to the old lakes and rivers? Or too much real sense of real danger?”

Winter, spring and fall, at least around here.

It seems there’s GOT to be a way to return sanity to institutional policies about stuff like this, even if actually getting it implemented is a pipe dream.

Given that they’re by no means universal across the board, I think taking the individual approach is probably best.

Oy! How are the kids going to learn to really swim if they are wearing life jackets. Our swim club doesn’t permit any type of flotation device, including water wings or life jackets, in the main pool because one of the goals of the club is for kids to learn to swim. it has been amazing to watch how many of the 4 and 5 year olds–even without lessons–begin to pick up some of the fundamentals of swimming. But they wouldn’t if they were in lifejackets.

This certainly seems like overkill. I would imagine that one or the other – a parent within reach OR a life vest would be appropriate. I can’t see why you would need both.

I don’t like the age-based rules that people are giving either. Kids learn things at different rates. Age is rarely relevant to swimming ability.

I don’t use our Y so I don’t know the current rules. The pool we do use has no rules. It provides life vests in various sizes for use, but no test or age requirements. I guess the university trusts that its employees, students and alumni are not throwing their children in pools willy nilly to drown.

>>didn’t read all the comments but I have an easy solution, don’t go there anymore. Once they lose all their clients they might get a clue. Sorry people are so silly!<<

That may be an "easy solution" in theory, but it's not so "easy" when it's right in the thick of summer, it's 30 C (or about 90 F) outside, your kids want to go swimming, and the only way to make that happen is by taking them to the YMCA. I know, I know, you COULD always teach your kids that "you can't always get what you want," but I think it's kind of mean to invoke that when they're expressing a reasonable want, that you're able to accommodate, and all other things being equal, you would accommodate it. A lot of kids won't understand an explanation like, "The YMCA has rules that my mother doesn't agree with, so we don't swim there." They'd take it as, "My mommy won't take me swimming because she's mean," or worse, "My mommy won't take me swimming because I've been bad." Either way, I don't think it's fair to not take your kids swimming ALL SUMMER, even if the pool rules are unreasonable.

At our YMCA, we have membership assistance, and kids' swimming lessons up to Star Six are included with membership (just so we're clear, Star Six is probably the equivalent of Grey or White under the old Red Cross colour system), so if I had kids, and if I belonged to a YMCA with rules like that, and there were no other options in the area for swimming, I'd probably make swimming lessons happen somehow, either by applying for an assisted membership, or maybe by asking (nicely) if my parents or my brother could get my (hypothetical) kids swimming lessons as an early Christmas or birthday present, even if it was for the whole family–because, when you think about it, having kids who are safe and confident IS a gift to the whole family, because it means you can do more things in and around water together, without always having to be on guard. No life jacket can provide that.

Our Y group has been this way for several years; they are beyond the pale. And that is all I will say about it as I could go on and on! I would have stuck with our rec centers instead, but unfortunately, their pools started a 3.5 feet. No option for the littlest ones.

@Papilio

We call them water wings over here and they do not prevent drownings at all. As a matter of fact they have caused drownings. They do not support a child at all. The child’s arm, shoulder and back muscles keep their head above water. Some of the swimsuits with floatation in them, can be just as dangerous as they can force an unconcious body to float face down.

Swimming lessons should be considered mandatory for all. I do not mean to a high level, but nothing beats the real thing, as compared to mom or dad doing it at the beach.

When seeking your refunds from the Y, do not blame the lifeguards for being incompotent. Blame the Y. Tell the Y that they have their lifeguards too busy enforcing babysitting rules, that they cannot do their duty effectively. And they cannot.

5 yrs of lifeguarding with our parks and rec. dept. and we never had ratio adult to kid rules. No arms length rules. No swim tests. None of that crap. And in 5 yrs, between 2 town pools, we never lost anyone. We had our fair share of bumps, bruises, cuts, sprains, a couple heart attacks, a lady go into labour. Gotta love those moms that think because it is kid number 4 they can predict exactly when she will deliver. But no one died and no one even came close to drowning.

Leave!! Our gym has one rule only kids under 6 must have a parent in the water. My 4 year old can swim so I sit in the attached Hot tub while she swims.

@ Emily –

Our pool doesn’t give refunds for anything. If you are asked to leave for not following the rules, you get nothing. If the pool is closed down for some reason during the day, you get a rain check – a pass to come back for free another day.

To those who asked if my kids learned how to swim- my kids are teenagers now, and they have been swimming in the pool PFD-free for several years. Up until a few years ago I had my son wear a PFD at the lake and ocean, but not because of his poor swimming skills; I wasn’t comfortable with his ability to make good judgments about depths and distance. I just don’t see this as unreasonable. If they required all swimmers to wear PFD’s regardless of swimming ability, that might be unreasonable- but swimming half the length of a pool is not an unreasonable test. But as I said before, I’ve worked drowning recovery, so that certainly would color my personal views on the subject.

@Warren and Donna–Okay, maybe the YMCA wouldn’t give refunds for swimming passes for that day, but the swim-in could work if people demanded refunds for their memberships if they got kicked out of the pool over using their own judgement as parents, and attempting to teach their kids to swim properly instead of stifling them in life jackets–which might as well be straitjackets. Does this rule have any leeway for kids who ARE enrolled in (lower-level) swimming lessons, but aren’t yet able to swim the length of the swim test, and want to practice on their own time, which was encouraged when I was that age? Also, our submitter, Krista, mentioned that the rule only goes up to age eleven. Well, do the people at the YMCA really think that an ten-year-old who’s been forced to wear a life jacket in the pool since birth, will magically be able to swim on his or her eleventh birthday? Of course not.

I tend to agree with the previous posters who say that this policy is a ploy to get parents to put their kids in swimming lessons, but since the YMCA is a charitable organization that provides membership assistance, and at some YMCA’s, basic swimming lessons don’t cost extra, their motivation can’t be money. Maybe it’s another CYA insurance thing, so if something goes wrong, they can say, “It wasn’t our fault that Jimmy drowned!!! WE taught him to swim!!!” Then, all they have to do is pull up Jimmy’s swim records, from Splashers or Otter to his most recently completed swim level (Dolphin and up would probably pass the swim test), and match that to the swim test requirements. Then, they’d be able to say that they did “everything that they could,” and it must have been Jimmy’s fault for doing something he shouldn’t, or Jimmy’s parents’ fault for not supervising him adequately, but not their fault.

@Warren–I’m not sure that “just scooping it out” in the case of a child having a #2 accident is the best course of action. At every pool I’ve ever been to, the routine for that kind of thing (feces, vomit, or a wayward feminine hygiene product), has been to evacuate the pool, remove the solid matter from the pool, and then shock the pool with chlorine to decontaminate it. Yes, it was a pain having the pool closed for a day or two, especially in the heat of the summer, and yes, it was a pain to have to swim in overly-chlorinated water upon re-opening, but it was better than making people sick. I know that it might sound excessive to you, but I think that that policy makes sense, because a lot of the time, the symptoms of stomach flu can appear suddenly, and can you imagine that happening in a swimming pool? Parents take child swimming, child has tummy trouble and either throws up or gets diarrhea in the pool, lifeguards just scoop out the mess and let everyone back in the pool, then other people get stomach flu as well, and spread it to others. It’s not an uncommon occurrence either–I once got stomach flu at a movie theatre when I was ten. I got home in time, but I went from feeling fine to feeling completely nauseated in just a few minutes. To this day, I can’t even watch The Babysitters’ Club Movie without feeling a little queasy, because that’s the movie I was watching when it happened.

This sounds like a risk management policy (protect against lawsuit). I would look at area school’s public swim options as an alternative to consider. Many high schools open their pools up to the public. YMCA is great, but expensive. If they are this overprotective / overly restrictive at yours (mine wasn’t) and won’t change their policy in response to your request, let your checkbook do the talking. They may be more inclined to listen if membership suffers as a result of this silly / counterproductive policy.

I am so grateful for your responses! Thank you! This policy was definitely handed down to my local branch as a result of a local consolidation. I am looking into alternative facilities, but there are numerous reasons that’s tricky (price, location, hours of operation and more). I am in talks with the local staff and have now tried to get other members to write letters. I have paid for swim lessons and will continue to do so. But I’d also like my son to have some fun in the water in addition to the lessons–you know, like he did up until this new policy.

Thanks for the support!

We belong to a Swim and Tennis Club during the Summer. There is a 3 foot pool that a parent just needs to be on the deck for. The big pool there are 3 areas. one is 3/5 ft. -4ft deep, then there are the lanes, and then the diving well. You have to be able to pass a test to get in the diving well. Other than that it is parental choice.

What I love about our pool. If your child is 12 and above – you can just drop them off and go. I see a ton of kids in the neighborhood that ride their bikes there. I have to be at the club if my 8 yo is there but not on top of her.

They have a swim team and all that is required to be on it is to swim 25 meters. The little ones that can’t join a mini team that is more hands on and will teach them how to swim. The cost to join the team is only $50 and that is for 2 months.

My daughters’ year round swim team club costs me 4K a year but she is a serious swimmer. She is fit and strong – worth every penny.

Crazy, of course. The Boy Scouts have their own example of this insanity. All scouts must be tested each year for swimming capability, even if they have earned the swimming merit badge, and/or have been swimming for many years. My high school son who used to be on the swim team needs to take this each in order to participate in any activities that include water.

@Bobca–My old summer camp (Camp Kitchikewana on Beausoleil Island in the Georgian Bay Islands National Park) has a similar rule. Every camper, from the littlest kids up through Leadership, does a swimming test on the first day of camp (or the second, if the first day is thundering and lightning, which has happened). Anyway, I went to that camp from age 10 through 16, and passed every year. The test isn’t that hard; it’s just 75 metres, from the outside edge of the docked-in swimming area to the boating area. It’s since been changed, from open water to within the swimming area, but it’s the same distance. Some kids didn’t pass, and they were encouraged to practice and re-take the test at any time during the session, as many times as they wanted. When someone passed the test partway through the session, they’d get to move a green peg down one notch in a giant wooden thermometer we had in the dining hall, at the next meal. The test was called “Go for Green,” and it was divided into three categories–Green meant you could use the swimming and boating areas with no restrictions, Yellow meant you had to be watched a bit more closely (not sure about the specifics, because hardly anyone got Yellow), and Red meant you could only go swimming or boating with a counsellor, and had to wear a life jacket in the deep end of the swimming area. Anyway, after my first summer or two, Go for Green stopped being a true “test” of swimming ability, and it became more of a charming first-day-of-camp ritual, much like opening campfire.

Really – kids drown more easily *with* water wings?
What were my parents+swimming teachers+life guards thinking?? It’s a miracle I still have a pulse!

Those rules seem so incredibly over the top. I was floored when we moved to where we live now and found similar rules at our local pool. So floored that I won’t take my kiddos to the pool for free swim anymore.

I compare that experience to what was available to us 10 years ago when we lived elsewhere. My son was 6 years old and couldn’t even ride his bike without training wheels. Still, we let him take his bike up to the local rec center and sign himself in (alone). He’d go swimming for the afternoon and then pedal himself home (maybe about a mile or so). Lifeguards were there to keep kids safe and no one ever said boo about my child coming and going on his own accord.

I had no idea how free range I was until those options no longer even existed for me.

@JT While an interesting idea in theory, in practicality the problem is that for a law suit to be successful you have to be able to prove losses which in a case where somebody dies usually comes from lost productivity. Since the kids haven’t drowned you don’t have a lawsuit because a kid might drown as might doesn’t equal loses. One however, might be able to have a class action lawsuit suing to get their dues back, however most likely when agreeing to join you agreed to follow whatever rules the gym imposes so that probably won’t fly either. Probably the best thing you can do is cancel your membership and while doing so clearly state this policy as the reason.

We belong to the Y. The pool we spend most of the time at has a shallow entry end ( less than one foot) and the deep end is four feet in one corner and five feet in the lap lanes. Kids under 11 have to have a parent present. Kids 7 and under have to have a parent in the water with them. My daughter is six. I usually sit on th steps and watch her and the lifeguards are fine with that. My eight year old son had to pass the deep water test to go in the other end, even though he can stand with his feet on the bottom and his head wayyyyy above the water. He had to swim one length of the pool without stopping and then jump in and tread water for 30 seconds. At the pool with the water slide and eight feet deep, it goes up to one minute.

He also swims laps, although technically the rules say members have to be 16 to participate in lap swim. Again, the lifeguards said nothing.

The idea of a life jacket in a shallow entry pool is insane. The whole reason we go there is so my daughter can practice her swimming yet know she can put her feet down and stand up if she needs to. This has helped her confidence immensely and her swimming has really improved. Hopefully my Y will not adopt these policies!

@Papilio

When we worked at the town pools, water wings were not allowed. They are toys and not PFD’s. The big problem is people think of them as PFD’s, and get too relaxed. Kids get to confident with them. They slide off, and they only support the arms. While supporting the arms they interfere with the movement of the arms. They serve absolutely no good whatsoever, and cause certain risks.

@Emily
The town pools completely cycled, filtered and treated the pool’s entire volume of water every 2 hrs. Chlorine is automatically added into the system 24hrs a day, to keep the level where needed.
Vomit, and excessive blood, would cause the close of a session, but not the entire day.
If you got the flu, planters warts or anything it would be contracted from the changerooms, not the pool.

@Emily

I’ve actually seen all the situations you’ve pointed out (closing the pool until further notice, cancelling classes, or even just through inaction, by setting up overly restrictive rules, or by letting exercise machines break and not fixing them) occur at gyms.

From a moral perspective I agree it’s unfair, from a legal perspective I’m telling you there isn’t really much your going to do about it. All you can do is 1. cancel your membership 2. Ask for a refund or to be able to cancel early. 3. Threaten to write negative reviews and/or contact the media.

Prior to signing the contract you can ask to have specific items removed or changed, which when your dealing with a large chain gym probably will not be honored.

“Kids must wear a life jacket”? Right. Buy an inflatable one. Then wear it DEFLATED Does the rule says “a working life jacket”? No? So…If they make stupid rules, read them in a stupid way.
Do you have to stay in the pool to watch your son to be safe? Stay in the pool with him and knit or crochet (if you feel he doesn’t need your help and your’re there just to follow a rule). Show the pool crew that you feel these rules are stupid. Maybe they will think about it.

Read this article….drownings happen in a blink of an eye!You can never be too safe! When I was a little girl you used to be able to sit in a car with no car seat….no seat belt….but things change.

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/parenting&id=8164327

We’re in Fla where just about every kid learns to swim by 3 or 4, just out of survival with all the water we have around. Kids who can’t swim are considered a danger to themselves and other children around them.

We found that the Y was a terrible place for swimming lessons too. They had a “we won’t force anything” policy – and hello a 3 or 4 year old is going to cry when you dunk them! If they cried they got put on the side of the pool to calm down – in 10 minutes the whole class was crying. $100 down the drain.

I found our city pools used a program called Gus and Goldie (named for fish) and they could care less if the kids cried. They took them out in the water away from the walls and let go and the kids learned. They also insisted the kids jump off the 1 meter diving board. In 4 days (one hour each lesson) every kid in the class was swimming like fish and confident enough to jump off the board. Swimming isn’t one of those things you teach passively to little kids – your force them to do it and then they learn.

Having them float around in life jackets is just plain dangerous to all.

I “piggybacked” my 11 year old in our condo pool and then she “piggybacked me.” It was a lot of fun in a very hot day in Maryland.

I taught my daughter how to swim at age 6 I was pulling my hair out today she does fine, Never used a floatie or noodle. Last week she was watching a four year old whose mother left the pool and aunt who didn’t want to come in a mess up her hair.

@Warren. Ah.
The psychology part reminds me of bike helmets – except for the toy part then.

Someone actually mentioned teaching how to swim as safety measure in the comments on a very recent post… Kind of ironic that exactly that is now the issue.

No time right now to read everyone, but just like the other draconian “rules” in the name of safety (background checks for parents who read to kids in the classroom comes to mind), can we come up with stats for just how many children actually drown at a public pool that is festooned with lifeguards?

Seriously. Like all those kids who fall prey to the chaperones who come along on the museum visit. I grew up living at the public pool as a kid, I do think there was a swim test in order to use the diving boards, but there were no rules about using the 3′ – 7′ depths of the pool. And there was only one lifeguard. These days, looked like at least three supervising the same area.

I worked like hell to learn to swim because I wanted to use the diving boards. Imagine my dismay if I’d been zipped into a PFD and told I couldn’t. Blah, I say.

Our kids learned to swim as babies at a YMCA in wintry upstate New York, because back then they had a wonderful program in which the instructors coached the parents in teaching their children, and we thought it would be a fun thing to do together. If you have the patience, it is easier and more fun to teach a baby to swim than a three-year-old, because he hasn’t yet lost his love of the water and his breath-holding instincts.

Little did we know then that we would soon be moving to Florida, where we were very grateful for their swimming skills. Back then, too, the local pool had no problem with letting our preschool water bugs swim unaccompanied, in the deep end, and even use the three-meter diving board. Now it doesn’t have any diving board at all. 🙁

Really, are kids so much more fragile these days? If so, we’ve done it to them.

If you’re not careful, your kids won’t live to grow up; if you’re too careful, they won’t grow up to live.

@Jill: This is a pet peeve of mine. I live in Scottsdale, AZ, where child drownings are CONSTANT. BUT if one person is assigned to watch any child that can’t swim, the odds go down immeasurably. A lot of adults is not safety…one adult who is WATCHING is safety. This child didn’t have to drown and it is the fault of any adult who was supposed to be supervising her that she did.
The requirement to wear a lifejacket in a YMCA pool with a parent in the water is ridiculous. Had Joanie been in the water with a parent who was WATCHING her, she wouldn’t have drowned..with or without a lifejacket and the lifejacket itself prevents a child from learning to swim and resurface.
No, you can’t be too careful when it comes to kids and water…but being the WRONG kind of careful is useless.

Have you noticed that most of these rules are on paper only? If it were me, I’d go the route of cheerful disobedience and get in the pool with your child but don’t put the vest on. Odds are they aren’t going to say anything to you.

Once he’s proficient enough then get the test so he can enjoy swimming freely.

“Have you noticed that most of these rules are on paper only? If it were me, I’d go the route of cheerful disobedience and get in the pool with your child but don’t put the vest on. Odds are they aren’t going to say anything to you. ”

Maybe this is the effect of having fewer, more sensible rules, but at our Y, if you are not following the rules, or appear like it’s possible you’re not following them (say your kid looks like he is probably be below the minimum age for something, a big problem in our family) you WILL be — politely — spoken to about it. (They are always very nice about it, always asking first IF the child is of a certain age.) But I guess that’s always the way — when the rules get more complex and more trivial, no one wants to enforce them all, possibly because the people who are supposed to enforce them don’t internalize them as necessary to enforce, because they’re NOT actually necessary for good order or safety.

@Yan Seiner: At our community pool, it is well publicized that you must show up the minute open swim starts because they only allow X number of swimmers per lifeguard and when the limit is reached, that–is–it. It seems like a sensible rule to me. Also, even in Alaska, it only costs a dollar to go to open swim.

Oh, and the only rules regarding children and safety are that anybody under 8 years old must have a responsible adult on hand, nobody is allowed to stand on floaty things, and if the lifeguard tells you to quit doing what you’re doing, you have to quit it or leave.

@Jenny Islander: Can you contact me via email about Alaska? yan (at) seiner . com – thanks.

PFD? The town where I learned to swim had a municipal pool and didn’t allow them. Took Red Cross swimming lessons there and almost failed the first year because I couldn’t float on my back.

There are scientists who study the effects of Avoidance of risk on Risk:
http://www.ece.wisc.edu/~dobson/PAPERS/bhattHICSS05.pdf

Using a life jacket is avoidance of risk today, which results in huge increase in risk tomorrow.
For this reason, I do not allow my 2nd child to wear a life jacket (unless boating, tubing, waterskiing, etc..).

With my first child, for convenience sake and due to not thinking this through too well ahead of time, we did use lifejackets when he was 3. One day he did not realize he was not wearing it, nonetheless he bolted for the deep waters well ahead of me and out of my sight.
But the real issue was not this particular incident, but the general attitude of not thinking of assessing risk and that being in a life jacket was a great solution to all problems.

Ultimately, he did start swimming before age 5 (because I made it a priority) but the struggle of convincing him to work and apply himself, and overcoming the influence practically being shouted from everywhere that nothing more is expected of him and that somehow magically he’ll swim at some later age, reminding him that it is not always wise to be like others, teaching him not to measure own responsibility against the other’s level (i.e. attitude that other kids just use life jackets, so I don’t need to swim), etc.. completely outweighed any ‘benefit’ or ‘convenience’ that we had enjoyed at the time of using the life jacket in his earlier years.

So, with my second child, at age 2.5 I was fortunate to be able to enroll her in ISR lessons – Infant Swimming Resource. No floating devices in this program.
They teach a survival skill – to float on back, and for older kids to do a sequence of float-on-back then swim on tummy ( with head under water) then float then swim…. The 2.5 y.o. in our stream graduated at this ‘sequence’ level.

Now, this is a skill to have for life, and to build upon!
And most importantly these kids now have a healthy, informed awareness of what water really is.

I love how after not being able to learn how to swim, the day that they turn 11, they can tear off that life jacket and jump into the deep end, unaccompanied. Because, of course, there’s a magical age where you just know how to swim. This is a really ridiculous policy that is blatantly crippling for children.

@Sarra–Your YMCA seems a bit inflexible. Can’t they do the Yellow test closer to the shallow end, so your daughter doesn’t fail it just for being too short? Also, is the swim test a “once per visit” thing, a “once per summer” thing, or somewhere in between? Can the kids practice and retake the test until they get their Yellow or Green bands?

You teach your children how to ride a bike with training wheels but your willing to put your non-swimming child in water without flotation? Insane!?! The “I’m teaching my kid” excuse isn’t enough in my opinion some parents probably do teach their children but lets be real…. Most use lifeguards as their child’s babysitter. Why risk it??

@Jill–The thing about teaching kids to ride bikes with training wheels is, eventually, the training wheels come off. At that point, of course the kid is going to fall a few times, but the parent is usually right there, to either catch them on the way down, patch them up when they do fall, or even confine bike-riding to the grass in the early stages, so it doesn’t hurt too much when the kid falls. However, you don’t put the training wheels back on at the first tumble. Likewise with swimming–eventually, the flotation device has to come off. If the parent is right there with the child, legitimately teaching them how to swim, or reinforcing what the child is already learning in swimming lessons, and helping the child when something goes wrong (like, if the child swallows some water or something), then the child eventually learns to swim. Leaving the life jacket on until some arbitrary age cut-off doesn’t teach swimming; it teaches helplessness. Then, when the life jacket does come off, the child still can’t swim. Even if the child is in swimming lessons, the YMCA’s policy doesn’t allow for practicing and reinforcing those skills during free time, so the child ends up needing either more lessons, or a different pool to practice at that doesn’t require life jackets–which defeats the whole purpose of belonging to the YMCA pool.

Also, I can imagine that the swimming lesson without PFD/free swim with mandatory PFD scenario would confuse a lot of children. In swimming lessons, they’re told, “Yes, you can swim without a PFD,” but in free swim, they’re told, “No, you can’t.” This is like the Pull-Ups trap that a lot of parents fall into when they’re potty-training their kids. They put their child in underwear around the house, in the daytime, when it’s convenient for them, and then they put their child in a diaper or Pull-Up when they’re leaving the house, going somewhere in the car, at night, on holidays when they’re busy with other things, and so, the child gets mixed messages about adults’ expectations, and takes longer to be completely potty-trained and wearing underwear full-time. The life jacket rule at Krista’s YMCA is exactly like that. Again, the transition between “non-swimmer” and “swimmer” is a transition, and people need to learn to let that happen. An enclosed, lifeguarded swimming pool, with a parent right beside his or her fledgling swimmer, is probably the safest environment possible in which to let it happen.

Jill, putting your child in water that the child can STAND in is not the same thing as throwing your child in the deep end without being able to swim.

Sure, some preschoolers may not be able to stand in some shallow end pools and may need the parent there with them. But almost EVERY elementary child can stand in the shallow end of most every pool. They shouldn’t have to wait until Middle School to be able to actually do things like play “Ring Around the Rosie” and go under the water. As Lenore and other have pointed out, there is a time frame when such activities are done voluntarily by the kids that if they have to wait too long to do them, the opportunity is lost.

I taught kids to swim for many years, and, like many other skills, many kids CAN teach THEMSELVES to swim if given the chance. Most want to swim with their friends in the deep end. An important part of that is learning to swim without a floatation device, and learning to swim UNDER the water. A child who cannot swim under the water is NOT a safe swimmer in my book – they WILL panic and be a danger to themselves.

Oh, and as for parents treating the pool like a daycare? I worked at a daycare and taught the daycare kids how to swim. We had no were near one on one adult to kid in pool with the school age kids. ( 1 to 4 for preschoolers.) I never lost a child. This daycare typically had 30 school age kids a day.

Sorry, no-brainer here. Is the policy kind of dumb? Sure. But the solution is simple. Sign the kid up for swimming lessons. At our YMCA, that’s $20 per session. They do sliding scale for lower-income families. Water safety is absolutely non-negotiable for me. If a child doesn’t know how to swim, they need to be in a life jacket when near or in the water. This has always been the rule in our family.

There are a lot of things that are statistically unlikely to happen to a child that people freak out about way too much. This is not one of them. Drowning is a real risk.

Please, let’s not turn this movement into a libertarian, “we should be able to do whatever we want,” free-for-all. Sometimes, rules make sense.

@Leah, I agree that drowning is a risk and that measures should be taken to keep non-swimmers safe near water. I think where we disagree is what measures are necessary. Close supervision is reasonalbe- wearing a PFD while being closely supervised is overkill. Do you feel a parent is not capable of teaching a child to swim? Children learn all sorts of skills- how to walk, how to ride a bike, how to climb the ladder for the slide at the playground- under their parents’ supervision, without having to pay an “expert” to give classes. Why do you feel swimming is different?

And… How is wearing a PFD going to help if the kid falls into a creek? Are you going to make your kids wear PFDs 24/7, just in case they slip and fall into some water?

P.S., I forgot to mention, it’s going to be especially confusing for kids, if the swimming instructor who tells them they can swim without PFD’s, and the lifeguard at free swim who tells them they can’t, are the same person. I’m not sure how other YMCA’s work, but at ours, it’s common for lifeguards to also teach swimming lessons–not simultaneously with lifeguarding, of course, but a lot of people work on getting lifeguarding and swimming instructor certifications around the same time. For example, I took Bronze Medallion and Assistant Swim Instructor at the same time when I was thirteen, and this was a common practice.

Having an adult closely supervising young kids is more important than having an artificial floatee on. The idea that the floatie makes kids safe around water could lead to less parental supervision, which IMO is more likely to lead to drowning.

Based on my experience, for a child still learning to swim, it is enough to have a parent closely attending to the child, and flotation devices are not necessary. I used to take two 3yos to the pool and have them practice in water over their head (with me in the water nearby). I never came close to having an “incident.”

It can take kids a long time (years) to learn to swim, especially if the only time they are allowed to practice is during an actual swimming lesson.

Of course, I’m “that mom” who removed the training wheels when the kids were 3 and nowhere near able to ride on their own. Training wheels completely distort the riding experience and probably delay the ability to ride for real. But at least this does not create a drowning risk.

I didn’t have time to read all the comments, so please forgive me if I repeat other’s advice. I was a lifeguard and taught swimming classes when I was younger. I agree with Eileen to first speak with the aquatics director.

Then, perhaps you’d want to contact the American Red Cross to get their opinion and see if they are willing to support you in changing the Y policy. The Red Cross has, for a long time, set standards for water safety. If they agree with you, that could mean a lot in swaying the Y’s decision. Of course, if the Red Cross has also gone nuts, then at least you’ll know how deep a problem this is.

@Warren–I think there’s some middle ground between dunking a child underwater (which can be traumatizing for the under-five set, and those not familiar with water), and allowing kids to just sit on the side of the pool and not participate. Like I said before, the goal is to get kids to want to dunk themselves voluntarily, by making a game of it–like Ring Around the Hot Dog, diving for objects, underwater freeze tag where you have to unfreeze people by swimming underwater between their outstretched legs, etc. I wouldn’t call refusing to dunk a child “chicken,” but I think that not being able to come up with a viable alternative is a little uncreative.

I am going to add–I think many parents nowadays are absolutely totally way beyond ridiculous where it regards water safety, to the point that I have a hard time biting my lip and giving in to the urge to yell out to such a parent “if you’re not going to let your child enter the water, quit bringing them around it!!” In fact, it is one of the earliest signs that I was a free-range parent.

To wit: among many other experiences, I once was at the pool at our apartment complex. A young & attractive lady (sorry, but I couldn’t help but notice) was babysitting (or whatever) a group of kids in our pool, an 8 foot deep unsupervised pool. These kids were like 9-12 years of age. She would not let them go into the 8 foot section, even with her there watching, and I had observed this woman before swimming in the 8 foot section with no problem, meaning that she wouldn’t be helpless if someone got into trouble.

She briefly went into the apartment & let them continue to be in the pool (the pool was in the middle of all the units, any of them would let you see the pool from the window) during this time they went in the 8 foot section and were doing fine. When she returned, she yelled so loudly you could’ve heard her 8000 miles away. It took all the restraint I could muster to not actually say to her “I think you’re being ridiculous, and if those kids were mine I wouldn’t let you watch them because I think you’re taking away all the fun of being a child in the name of ‘safety.'”

I really do think a lot of parents do that, and I think it’s just plain cruel frankly. If you’re not going to let your kids actually ENJOY the water, DON’T TAKE THEM THERE. What do you expect? If you took a child to an ice cream place and made them eat collards, how much sense would that make? Taking them to a lake & refusing to let them actually enjoy the water beyond their tip-toes is no different.

LRH

@Emily

Yes there is middle ground. But it is nowhere near as effective.

Sorry but when it comes to something like dunking kids underwater, so they get used to it, and learn what to do…..the tried and true method of just doing it, and ignoring their tears and screaming.

You know what happens when you dunk a screaming child…..when they come up they cough and gag.

You know what happens to that same child when the process is repeated a few times…………they learn to shut their mouths and hold their breath. And by lesson two or three, it is not a big deal anymore.

You give in, or try to find some middle ground and it is lesson 7 or 8 before they are over it, and you have wasted valuable time, on an irrational fear, and a kid throwing a fit.

Here is one for you Emily, do you know how we got people down off the high diving board when they froze in fear…………we basically shoved them off into the water. Water does not hurt, near as much as falling to the deck, while trying to climb back down.

There are other things we were trained to do that you wouldn/t like.

@Emily
Yes with kids old enough to take instruction, you tell them to close their mouth and hold their breath. 9 times out of 10 you still dunk them. Kids younger you just do it on a bouncing count of 3, while mimicing the holding of your breath. But when it comes right down to it, they have to do it. This is not only swimming for fun lessons, it is also needed skills being taught. No time to be all warm and fuzzy about it. When you are teaching a dozen kids, for 55 minutes once a week, you do not have time to baby them, and it does them no good to be babied.
As for the high board, coaching them off isn’t frozen in fear. If coaching fails, they go off the board into the water. Climbing back down a wet ladder, with wet feet, while riddled with fear puts the swimmer and lifeguard at risk. One of the first lessons you learn as a lifeguard is not to put yourself at risk. Do you realize what serious injuries can result from a backward fall onto a pool deck?

Another scenario. Do you know what lifeguards are taught to do if a scared swimmer manages to grab ahold of them?
Push, pull and hold them under until they release you. Once they realize that you aren’t holding them above water, panic causes them to let go. Create distance and retry. An injured or dead lifeguard cannot save anyone’s life.

The Y where my daughter took swimming lessons at 4 didn’t dunk a single kid, force any kid into the pool or force any kid to do anything. By the end of the 8 lessons, every kid was getting in the pool, getting his/her face wet, going to the bottom in the kiddie pool to pick up toys and able to stay afloat to some degree. You don’t have to bully kids to get them to learn how to swim. In fact, forcing some will do little more than make them hate swimming.

@Warren–I took lifeguard training classes too, and a swimming instructor course as a teenager, but they never, ever told us to dunk a child in swimming lessons, or push a panicking non-swimmer under the water. For swimming lessons, we were taught the methods I told you (incorporating it into a game, or holding hands and going under together), and for rescues, we used the ladder approach–first, try to talk them in, then throw a buoyant object, then throw a rescue aid attached to a rope and tow them in, then swim up to them and hand them a kickboard or other buoyant object, then, as a very last resort, swim up to them and try to pull them back to the side of the pool (or the dock or shore in a lake situation), on your own steam. In the event of a clinger, we were (I think) told to break loose and save ourselves, but not to hold the victim underwater. We were also told that, in a swim rescue, we should approach with the buoyant object first, and hold it between ourselves and the victim, so they’d grab the buoyant object instead of our person. They also touched on making do with common objects, like sticks, canoe paddles, and clothing items, if no “traditional” buoyant objects were available, like in a wilderness situation. I think that those lessons served us pretty well, because I actually did rescue my brother from drowning at the cottage when I was fourteen, when he was having a hernia in the middle of the lake. I swam out to him, and brought him back to the dock using a cross-chest carry.

Anyway, getting back to the swimming lessons, because those happen at most pools much more often than rescues (I hope), I agree with Donna–you don’t have to bully kids to get them to learn how to swim. I myself learned how to swim through a combination of YMCA swimming lessons, school-organized lessons at the local recreation centre, and more swimming lessons at summer camp, with a lot of reinforcement from my mother in the early years (my dad’s not a good swimmer, or he would have helped too). I was taught in the same positive, nurturing, and fun way that I described, and I grew to love swimming.

By the same token, I was taught all the traditional “team sports” (basketball, volleyball, soccer, baseball, and football or rugby) in elementary school, in the same forceful, bullying, “you have to do this” way you described with swimming. During those classes, public humiliation was a regular tool that gym teachers used as an “incentive” to get me to “try harder” or “toughen up,” and thinking that I was playing poorly on purpose, because I was a good student in the classroom; not realizing that I really couldn’t throw, catch, and run as well as the other kids, who teased me mercilessly over that fact. The teasing went unchecked, and the teachers often encouraged it. When I started high school, gym was mandatory for grade nine students, but it wasn’t as bad as elementary school. Being in an all-girls class definitely helped, and my grade nine gym teacher was good, and she had a more positive approach for teaching non-athletes. So, grade nine gym wasn’t torture, but by then, the damage had pretty much been done, and as soon as I no longer had to take mandatory phys. ed. classes, I stopped engaging in pretty much all physical activity, except for swimming and downhill skiing, because I thought I hated exercise. Later on, during the summer between my first and second year of undergrad, I rejoined the YMCA, and started exercising in the Conditioning Room there (and continued to swim in the pool also), and realized that I didn’t hate exercise; I just hated competitive sports. So, I kept exercising individually, and later, branched out and started taking yoga classes, and found I was good at it.

Today, I’m a certified yoga instructor, and I’m also working on certifications in personal training and choreography-based fitness. However, it took me a long time, and a fairly difficult battle against obesity, to get there, and I firmly believe that it wouldn’t have taken that long if it weren’t for my experiences in gym classes in elementary school. It doesn’t matter what the activity is; if you try to force it down someone’s throat, they’re not going to like it, and they’ll probably stop doing it as soon as they don’t “have to” anymore.

As for the time crunch issue, our YMCA has gone to “rolling registration” for Otter through Star Six, so instead of enrolling your child in one ten-week block of swimming lessons at a time, you enroll them once, at the beginning of the school year, or the summer, and they start in the level you put them in, and progress through the levels as they’re ready. So, if a child, say, finishes everything for Seal in five lessons, but needs eleven lessons to get through Dolphin, it’s not a big deal, and they aren’t made to feel like they’ve “failed,” and then forced to sign up for ten more lessons of Dolphin, when one more is enough. It also saves parents the hassle of remembering to re-register their kids for swimming every ten weeks, along with all the other little to-do’s that come with parenting. I know you may think that this system is “babying” kids, but you have three children yourself, so I’m sure you’d appreciate the convenience.

I learned to swim by the time I was 2 with a wonderful teacher at the Y. I was swimming laps, racing, and could do the breaststroke and butterfly by 3. Wearing a life vest would have been ridiculous at that point. My brother could swim long before he learned to walk. It seems to be instinctual for a lot of kids and shouldn’t be hard to teach for an experienced instructor. It is really important to learn to go under the water if you live near the ocean. It is often safer to go under a wave rather than over so long as you learn not to panic. Going underwater and then resurfacing and floating on your back is a skill every toddler should learn. Making kids wear a life vest might actually be more dangerous once they start swimming in the ocean.

@Emily
Well being certified for 8 yrs, because I kept up my certification, as an NLS certified lifeguard, teaching lifeguards, heading up in service training for all our town lifeguards, and actually competing in team and pair lifeguard comps is a helluvalot different than taking a few classes.

And I will tell you right now that in the event a 200 plus pound man that is in a panic grabs ahold of you, you are screwed. The panic increases their strength, and determinaton, and even with my size and power I would be hard pressed to escape. Now I could have written a lifeguard textbook response about all the steps leading up to and including being grabbed, but I really didn’t feel like it.

We worked on catch and releases. And despite all the techniques we were taught we had lifeguards that could not break my hold, and the hold of other lifeguards. Some of the females were great lifeguards, but I had 80 plus pounds on them, and twice their strength. They didn’t stand a chance. In a real situation, they will have to force the victim under water, to force a release. Or risk death. It i that simple. That black and white. Taking classes at the Y doesn’t mean shit, compared to real life.

And to be perfectly blunt, we did not bully anyone. And I am sick and fucking tired of you whiney little bitches using the word bullying for every little fucking thing you don’t like.

I do not care how many of you swim, taught your kids to swim, or whatever bullshit you want to throw out there. None of you could come close to the number of kids, and adults I taught . And I guarantee you, none of you have performed the rescues I have.

@Yan
Yes lifeguards are taught to take a fear stricken person under water, to cause them to release their grip. I have taught the techniques on how to do it. And no a drowning victim seldom screams in distress, but a hurt child does, people around victims do.

All you experts know jack shit. Been there, done it, taught it, and also partnered with a co worker to modify our pool backboards, to secure the victim better, and lift from the pool easier.

@Warren–Maybe there are some circumstances under which you’ve had to briefly put a panicking drowning victim underwater to stop them from trying to grab onto you. Fine, rescues with buoyant aids don’t always work, slipping underwater yourself doesn’t always work, and the rescuer’s life ultimately comes first. I get that–and actually, now that I remember it, I think we were taught to try to slip underwater ourselves, so the victim would let go, but not to try to take them down with us. However, you really don’t have me convinced that it’s so important for a child to learn how to breathe/swim underwater in two or three swimming lessons instead of five, or eight, or ten, that you have to forcibly push them underwater. I think it’s more important that they learn to do these things voluntarily, because then, they’ll be more inclined to practice swimming on their own, which will make them stronger swimmers in the long run. Forcing a child underwater may force that skill a few weeks earlier, but people in the “forced underwater” or “thrown in the deep end” group are rarely to be found on swim teams, or in Bronze Medallion/Bronze Cross classes, or at open lane swims, later in life.

So, since swimming is a vital surivival skill, I think it’s even more important to find ways to teach kids to swim in a positive and non-scary manner, because little kids remember a lot more than we give them credit for. For some kids, being dunked underwater or thrown in the deep end against their will by a parent or a swimming instructor, is traumatizing enough that they become even more reluctant to swim, and end up avoiding water as they get older. These people become true “non-swimmers,” in that they don’t swim, and they don’t want to swim, unlike all those poor life-jacketed kids at Krista’s YMCA, who do want to swim, but aren’t given the opportunity to practice. However, while everyone hovers over kids around water, nobody thinks to watch out for the adult who looks strong and healthy, but can barely dog-paddle.

For example, my dad isn’t good at swimming, not because of a traumatizing experience, but because of a simple broken promise surrounding swimming He wanted a pair of golf shoes as a teenager, and his mother promised him the shoes if he learned some basic survival swimming (I think he was 13 or 14). He kept up his end of the deal, but she didn’t, reasoning that his “feet were still growing.” After that, he didn’t see any point in swimming, so he just stopped. Now, if that can drive someone away from water, then a traumatizing experience in the water at a much younger age can certainly have the same effect. I refuse to ride roller coasters, because I went on one when I was six, and when the track tipped sideways, I thought I was going to fall out. Yes, I was strapped in, but I was also six years old, and didn’t have a solid grasp on physics.

Likewise, a preschooler won’t understand that Mommy/Daddy/Warren the swimming instructor isn’t dunking them to be mean, but to teach them “for their own good.” The biggest lesson they’ll learn from this is, “saying no doesn’t work,” and “might makes right.” You say that dunking a child underwater, or throwing them in the deep end, isn’t bullying, but it fits the criteria–you’re using your significant advantage over the child, of size, and strength, and a position of authority, to dominate and exert your will over him or her. If you were lifeguarding at the pool, and you saw an older child doing that to a younger child, you’d tell them to stop it, right? Well, what would you say if the older kid replied, “But Warren, that’s how you taught me when I was in beginner swimming lessons with you?” It’s far easier to set a universal rule that everyone treats one another with respect and kindness, than to say that might makes right in SOME circumstances, but not all, and to set up a complicated system of double standards, that okays adults dunking kids, but not kids dunking kids, or adults spanking kids, but not physical violence on the playground, and a myriad of other uneven rules.

Anyway, back to swimming–I learned these early skills by playing Ring Around the Hot Dog and diving for imaginary pickles, or pennies, or weighted plastic toys, and passed it on. You learned by shoving kids underwater, and passed that on. All I know is, I doubt I ever put anyone off of swimming during Ring Around the Hot Dog, and I really doubt you can say the same thing about the forcing method. I know you’ll probably say that those kids are “just pansies,” and need to “get over it,” or “toughen up,” but there are two holes in that line of logic. Number one, how would you feel if someone who weighed 1,000 pounds (which would be about five times your size, so, about the same size ratio between an adult and a preschooler) shoved you underwater, or into a situation that you’re frightened of, against your will? Number two, how the heck is the Warren Solution of “Get over it and toughen up, you pansy” going to help them if they fall out of a boat?

I have been a swim instructor & a lifeguard. I think Warren was just a little careless in his description of what to do if someone panicking grabs you. It’s not that you push them under, you go under yourself, & if that’s not enough to make them let go, you push them up, while staying under yourself, & when they let go, you swim under water until you’re out of reach.

As far as pushing screaming kids underwater to teach them, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Face the kid (when they’re calm), hold hands, count, & go under. They may barely get their mouth wet the first time, but eventually they’ll go under. My husband’s dad would pull him under, & he’s still scared of the water, even after scout camps.

No problem being long winded (coming from a fellow long winded person, so I might be biased). But you brought up some good points regarding teaching.

>>I especially liked the thousand pound man idea….have been trying to visualize one! Have a great day <<

Well, this thousand pound man would have to be about twelve feet tall, in order to get the preschooler-to-adult-size ratio completely accurate. So, a regular man's head would come up to about his waist, or maybe a bit above, and a regular woman's head would come up to the middle or the top of his thigh. His proportions are the same as any other man; he's just twelve feet tall and weighs a thousand pounds. Does that make it easier to visualize?

Most in my generation were taught swimming by “tried and true” throw them there and ignore cries method.

Well, I know too many adults that are shit scared of deep water and are not willing to go there. Or at least hate the water and still remember how they hated swimming lessons.

Most of those adults actually can float a bit and swim short distance – it is fear and hate not incapability.

For that reason I would not put my kid through such lessons. I want them swim and like water.

@Uly–That’s awesome that you’re learning to swim. How did you like your first lesson? I went swimming today too, at the beach near my house, because it was about 30 C out, and it’s just now cooled down to 28. .

Well, I learned a little and made progress, so I liked it a lot! Plus, I may be able to cadge some glasses frames off the instructor, which will save me a bundle.

And yes, I really want to learn how to swim because I’ve been pushing the nieces to learn, and now I want to be able to take them into the water and let them go a little further than I currently allow when I’m with them.

At some point with my older two kids, we did swimming lessons because it was the only way we could get into a pool.

My son was just 2 at the time. I had to be in the water with him for the lesson. (Which I was fine with.) For learning to go under the water, the parent held the child with face out of the water, then rotated the child so that their ear was in the water, then rotated forward so the face was under. It worked like a charm. The toddler would close mouth when the ear went in and then the parent could put the child under – they had us pushing the child under as though swimming underwater. No screaming toddlers. None gasping because they swallowed water. None of them scared.

Warren, I don’t know if your methods were harmful to the kids because, you’re right, I wasn’t there.

I do know that you are a very unpleasant person and your credibility is totally shot by the fact that you seem unable to defend yourself without attacking other people. So, yes, I suspect based on that fact alone that your methods were bullying and that they were scary to the kids and that you simply don’t care if they had a lasting negative impact.

Warren in this topic “I may be abrasive, but I do not accuse anyone of harming kids”.

Warren a few topics ago at Pentamom “Teaching kids to be considerate is one thing, but suppressing them is another”.

Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. I’m a little surprised warren managed to get kids, honestly. I miss Dolly.

Sorry for the typos 🙂

To everyone…. The Y has been a trend setter in the field for over 100 years… Hell they created Father’s Day (bet you didn’t know that nugget) why wouldn’t you at least consider their stance? I bet over the next 5 years you’ll
See this more and more. Sure it might be seen aggressive now but there’s an important life in that jacket…. Protect it!

Sorry Katie, I do not hide behind fake names.

Because I seriously disagree with her statements. Mostly the one about the Y being a trendsetter. Trends are one thing, but setting a trend is not setting the standard.

Quite a few places do not accept Y certifications, as meeting the requirements.

And again at Uly, you check with Mark Spitz for all I care.
“Yes with kids old enough to take instruction, you tell them to close their mouth and hold their breath. 9 times out of 10 you still dunk them. Kids younger you just do it on a bouncing count of 3, while mimicing the holding of your breath. But when it comes right down to it, they have to do it. This is not only swimming for fun lessons, it is also needed skills being taught. No time to be all warm and fuzzy about it. When you are teaching a dozen kids, for 55 minutes once a week, you do not have time to baby them, and it does them no good to be babied.”

Taken from one of my earlier posts. If you or anyone else thinks that is cruel, or bullying, then you need some serious help.

Jill, I was a life guard and swim teacher. Yes, I have been at really busy pools, ones that I was guarding at, that were filled to capacity. Over 100 people as I recall, but not hundreds, because that would be over capacity and just stupid dangerous. As the Lead Guard, it was my duty to make sure that we had proper staff coverage or that we limited the amount of people in the pool at a given time if we for some reason did not have proper coverage.

No, I DO NOT appreciate this rule. At all. A swim test is fine. But for kids who can touch the bottom of the pool in the shallow end, they DO NOT need to wear a life jacket. That is just humiliating.

Jill, what are you, some kind of perv? Who stares at their naked five year old while they bathe?

And no, I don’t think Warren and Jill are the same person. Most trolls don’t bother to seriously alter their writing styles, and there is a BIG difference between the two. Sometimes, people are just unpleasant, and sometimes two unpleasant people disagree.

To keep everybody updated, I did ask, and was told that while dunking a kid IS one method, it is certainly not the ONLY method, nor always the best one and she, personally, prefers to use other ways to get kids to go under on their own.

So there you go, and she most definitely has at least the same number of years experience teaching little kids as you do, Warren. The class size at the public pools caps at, I believe, 25, but they have multiple instructors for the kids, so I don’t know the exact ratio.

I agree with Warren on the dunking thing. Not that you have to bully kids… yes explain it to them, but if they don’t get it or refuse to do it, then you have to dunk them and ignore the whining or they will never learn.

This is pretty much why, after going to lessons together the first time, I ended up becoming a lifeguard while my brother never learned to swim. My brother was(/is) afraid of putting his face in the water. If he would have just been dunked at that young age, he would have gotten over it; but since he was babied and my mom said he didn’t have to put his face in the water, he was never able to progress past that first day of class (though he did try again several times as he got older, only to have the same fear), and never able to learn to swim.

The fear of the water doesn’t go away because someone turns 10; it only gets worse as the person gets older. It’s better to get them over it at a young age, because yes they will remember the dunking but if done young enough, they won’t remember the fear they previously had. And dunking them doesn’t traumatize them; it makes them realize that they AREN’T going to die from putting their face in the water for a few seconds. Now if you held them under to the point of near-drowning, THAT would traumatize them; but that is far from what Warren is talking about.

Teaching kids at a young age is best. All you really need is a bath tub or a dish tub of water. Toddlers love to play – get them to blow bubbles and see how it feels to put their faces in. I started my kids VERY young, and they never really had a fear of it.

I learned to swim under water before I was two. Yet, I had a horrible, irrational fear of showers. Put my whole head under – that was fine, stand under the shower to rinse hair? Screamed bloody murder!

Another thing about the life jackets is it also prevents another very important skill – learning to put your feet on the bottom if you fall in. One of the first things I taught all kids as a swim instructor, was if you fell into the water to try to put your feet on the bottom. My mother fell off a dock at age 4, and almost drowned because she didn’t think to try to get her feet on the bottom. Kids are not always at a pool with the lifejacket – they can fall in back yard fish ponds and drown there if they don’t know what to do. Or, as older kids, slip into a river or canal when walking with friends.

My daughter, who is 4 and has a swim lesson every week. Just last week she had her first lesson without the floaty. no song and dance, no notice to the parents. She did brilliantly and it was not until the end of the lesson that she realised what had happened. Children sometimes need an unwitting push.

Geez, Warren, chill out! First profanity, then all caps and multiple exclamation points (a sure sign, as Pratchett as observed, of a deranged mind), what’s next?

I don’t think free range means forbidding children from having their own fears. We all have fears, and different people need to deal with them in different ways.

I`m someone that actually almost drowned as a kid,and still think this is stupid.
As a five or so year old I jumped in the deep end,sunk and was saved by a life guard.
I never did that again though and became a smarter and better swimmer eminently.

Making the kids where life jackets or keeping to the kiddy pool will make it less fun for them,likely making them not wanting to swim at all. There for not getting the necessary practice. I`m not really against kids under 10 having a parent or guardian in the pool with but that’s it.

Forcing them doesn’t make sense either,it needs to be fun for the kids and they can become more confident on their own. Invite friends for the kid to play with in the water.

After I almost drowned I was still expected to swim,no one made a big deal out of it. That’s likely why it never became a phobia.

@Uly,

You are one of those people that continually poke at a dog, until you end up in the ER, and then claim you do not know why you were attacked, arent you……….Moron.

Whoops, I meant, “The survey pool consists of only the students who came back for MORE lessons” following the dunking incident. Anyway, Warren, I stand by what I said. I don’t know what Royal Lifesaving Society of Canada you’re talking about, but I learned from the same one, and was never told to dunk anyone underwater against their will.

@Uly
Tell you what, you put on your big boy pants, ask your wife for your pair back, come on down to Kingston and we can discuss this face to face.

Then you could make your accusations in the only acceptable manner. In person. Untill then, you will hold a place between an inch worm, and that white stuff that accumulates at the corner of your mouth on hot days.

@Emily

Will make my responses to yours, number for number.
1. Pay for private lessons. 90% of our instructors teach between 10 and 15 classes a week. Most of the instructors are highschool or college students. They do not get paid to take work home with them.
2. Again pay for private lessons, if you desire that kind of attention. No swim instructor needs to take work home with them, considering they probably teach over 100 students a week.
3.Your comparison is still idiotic. Comparing lessons to riding a rollercoaster. The rollercoaster is a funtime you would miss, and noone really cares. Swimming lessons are not up for negotiation. If mom and dad say you are going then you are going. And it is the instructors job to teach them the required skills to move on.
4. Well if our methods turned kids off of swimming then we would have seen the numbers drop for the next session. As all of our instructors taught with the same methods, as set out by our employer, and gone over at every inservice training. Our staff in the time I was there taught thousands of kids and adults how to swim. And you would think if our methods were questionable, we wouldn’t have the enrollment.
5. And yes until you are fully certified, with years of experience behind you, you do not know what you are talking about. As it stands now, the only thing you would have qualified for at our pools, would be cashier.

Now my own question for the masses. Just what do you think we are doing when we say we are dunking a kid?
Please give me you idea of what we are doing. I pretty much guarantee you are wrong, and way off. But that is the way you guys are.

@Warren–At the YMCA, I think NLS and swimming instructors’ courses are separate, and you can have one without the other. I mean, obviously, to be a swimming instructor, you’d have to be proficient at swimming (like, completed Bronze Medallion or Bronze Cross), but I never heard that you needed NLS to teach basic swimming lessons, from infant/preschool levels, or for Otter through Star Six.

As for kids being turned off of swimming because of dunking, forcing, etc., maybe the numbers stayed the same, but how many of those were returning students versus new enrollments? If you get a big influx for Otter, but the reluctant dunkees don’t return for Seal, Dolphin, Swimmer, etc., then that’s a pretty clear sign. I’ve seen and heard tons of stories of people who’ve said, “My mom/dad/swimming instructor tried to teach me to swim by dunking me underwater/throwing me in the deep end, and I’ve been afraid of water ever since.” Some weren’t affected in that way, but again, I wouldn’t take the chance.

As for swimming lessons being non-negotiable, I’d amend that to say that TRYING swimming lessons is non-negotiable, but if, for whatever reason, it just doesn’t “take” after a reasonable try (which happened with my dad and my brother), then you stop, and just take extra precautions around water with that person–life jackets in boats, of course, avoid water out of their depth, and just make sure they recognize the limits of their swimming abilities. Not everyone is good at everything, and some people are afraid of water. People who are as afraid of water, as I am of roller coasters, generally know that about themselves, and therefore don’t spend a lot of time around swimming pools or natural bodies of water. I know learning to swim is important, but again, some people are true non-swimmers, and their way of practicing “water safety” is to realize that and act accordingly.

I still don’t think my comparison to roller coasters is idiotic, because whenever I see a roller coaster in real life, and people rushing by, plunging down massive drops, twisting sideways and turning upside down, strapped in and screaming, my heart beats faster, my hands start to sweat, and I feel a bit sick inside, because I still remember the Santa’s Village incident as if it was yesterday, and I used to hate even being around roller coasters, but now I can at least be in the vicinity of one. If someone suggested that I ride on a roller coaster, let alone trying to MAKE me get on, I’d tell them no, and if they didn’t respect that, to the point of actually dragging me onto the ride, then I’d probably never speak to them again. I never said that riding a roller coaster was an important life skill; I just meant that I’m able to empathize with people who are afraid of water, because I have something that I’m equally afraid of. It’s not about which fears are “legitimate,” and which fears need to be “corrected” according to your standards; it’s about understanding why someone would feel a certain way.

@Uly

Again come to Kingston, I’ll by you lunch, and you can make your accusations in person.

@Emily,
You didn’t finish your NLS which excludes you from lifeguarding at for the town. You took assistant instructing? Not even recognized by our town. To teach for the town you must be fully cert as an instructor, then assist under a town instructor for 20 hours. So no you are not quaified, to do anything other than be cashier.

@Natalie

Again you think I operate under the same guidelines or morals as you. No I do not, as being in permanent PMS mode would be awful. Oh sorry was that sexist. Nat, you are one of those chicks that think you set the standard and can change eveyone to think the way you do. A typical estrogen charged ideal.

@Everyone
No one answered my question. Just what do you think we are doing when we talk about dunking kids?

@Warren–

1. Swimming lessons from infant through Star Six are free with membership at our YMCA, so if the child turns out not be a swimmer (which most people find out before Master Swimmer or Bronze Star), the parent isn’t out any money. Even if money was an object, I don’t think that the “parent is paying, child has to do it” argument is necessarily a trump card. If the parent pays, say, $100 for ten weeks of swimming lessons, and the child has a miserable experience (dunking, or thrown/pushed into the deep end) in week three, and doesn’t want to return, then maybe the parent and child have gotten $30 worth of swimming instruction in the mathematical sense, but in the “real” sense, not so much. Swimming lessons are supposed to make kids feel more comfortable in the water, especially in the lower levels, and if they have the opposite effect, they haven’t achieved their purpose. For every school-age swimming level at the YMCA, there are “general objectives” that come before specific swimming objectives. I don’t remember all of them for the Star levels, but for the first four levels (Otter through Swimmer), those objectives are “Participant relates well to others,” and “Participant enjoys participation.” Dunking a child underwater would negate those two objectives in one fell swoop.

2. Don’t parents teach children that their bodies are their own? If the child doesn’t want his or her body to be shoved underwater, or pushed or thrown into the deep end, then that should be the child’s decision, regardless of whose money is involved. I hate to resort to worst-first thinking, but establishing bodily autonomy and physical boundaries are lessons that should be taught early, and are maybe even more important than swimming.

3. I never said I was a swimming instructor; I just said that I’d witnessed, and helped with, the YMCA’s non-forceful, positive, and (mostly) effective swim teaching methods. Furthermore, NLS or not, I wouldn’t apply to work at your town’s pool, in any capacity (even cashier), because I don’t agree with the way that pool teaches swimming to kids.

@Natalie

‘more issues than National Geographic’.

Love it! Best quote of the week…:-)

Well if you think that a trained instructor dunks their students in that fashion, then you are a major league moron with absolutely no experience at all.

This is what happens when the inexperienced try to tell the experienced that they know better. The inexperienced just make fools out of themselves.

Emily, try using your intellect instead of your emotions, it will suit you much better.

Pushing a screaming kids head underwater……….rotflmao…..you really are that pathetically naive. Talk about worst first thinking. LOL this is and you are just too funny.

For the third time for the selective readers.
“Yes with kids old enough to take instruction, you tell them to close their mouth and hold their breath. 9 times out of 10 you still dunk them. Kids younger you just do it on a bouncing count of 3, while mimicing the holding of your breath.”
This is the second time I have cut and copied this earlier post of mine.

It just goes to prove that most of you are narrow minded, and have a hatred for loud aggressive people, who tell it like it is. Because instead of reading and understanding, you just jump to attack. Next time read, learn and keep your foot out of your mouths.

Differing opinions SKL does not make anyone an idiot. But not reading, and then making assumptions does make people idiots.

PS warren, I just looked back at your original “dunking” comments where you admitted that there was lots of screaming, gasping, etc. involved. After which you would do it again and again to force the child to figure out how not to inhale water. Different strokes for different folks, but I wouldn’t choose to put my 3yo into that type of a class. It’s not necessary in my opinion.

Funny since in an earlier post, you were all about making sure kids are relaxed, comfortable, and confident in water.

If you really can’t imagine a kid being timid of water after your version of being dunked, then you don’t know much about human nature.

Okay, Warren, let me amend that to say that “dunking” means pushing an UNWILLING child’s head underwater.

“He had a bad instructor who pushed his head under water as a child.”

And let me guess, mom babied him, said the instructor was mean and said he didn’t have to go back?

As for what the word dunking means… have you guys never heard of a dunk tank/dunking booth? Or dunking a basket ball? It simply means “immerse or dip in water.”

@Warren–I still don’t get it. Was the dunking actually just a bouncing count of three, holding hands, and then going under together, or did you actually push on the child’s shoulders or something, since pushing their head would cause a head injury? I wasn’t trying to malign you; I just didn’t understand exactly what you meant by “dunking” in the context of teaching swimming lessons. I don’t approve of the practice if force is involved, but if you said that you were able to do it humanely, then how did you go about it?

@Amanda Matthews–There’s a middle ground between allowing a child who’s been dunked by a swimming instructor to stop swimming, and forcing him or her to return to the same instructor. It’s also possible to switch classes, or even pools, or take a break from swimming lessons, but continue to practice the skills during free swim (if there isn’t a mandatory life jacket policy in place).

“And let me guess, mom babied him, said the instructor was mean and said he didn’t have to go back?”

I don’t know that person’s life history, but I know there are many others like this, including people whose own parents “threw them in” and certainly did not “baby” them.

The thing is, this is about learning a really important life skill. If a method is known to make some people less safe around water than they would be without lessons, maybe that’s not the best method for every kid. So far I’ve seen nothing to convince me that “dunking” a child who isn’t willing leads to better results than other methods. Maybe some kids will be ready to submerge their faces a day or two earlier, but in the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t make any difference.

I have a kid who, as a tot, absolutely hated having water poured on her head. Her nanny would insist on doing it every single day and making her scream. Why the hell? She grew out of her fear some time after the nanny stopped bathing her. At 3 she had no trouble keeping up with the other kids in swim class. But if they had forcibly “dunked” her, I think that would have been a setback. All kids are different, and there’s no need to call a parent names when she chooses one valid path over another for her kids.

** I’m sure Warren will come back with choice names for me because I felt for my screaming kid. FYI my kid came home via adoption at age 1 and she had a lot of issues relating to the complete disruption in her life. Irrational fears and sensory sensitivities are to be expected in such a case. It’s just one of those things that only the parents would know/understand, so there’s no point judging parents who make decisions different from what the Warrens of the world would choose.

Okay, Warren, you gave me chapter and verse on what you DIDN’T do while dunking children during swimming lessons. I’m not confused because I didn’t read the thead carefully; I’m confused because you said both “ignore the screams and just dunk the child,” and “hold hands for bouncing count of three and go under together,” so I don’t know which one it is. As for my choice of words, I suppose “approve” is the wrong word–let’s just say that I agree with the YMCA’s non-dunking philosophy. Is that wording okay with you? As for “humanely,” I can’t seem to find a better word……how about “non-forcefully?” That still sounds a bit accusatory as well, but I can’t think of another one right now. However, while we’re on the subject of word choices, writing the first letter of a nasty word, and filling in a dash for the rest, means the same thing as if you’d written the word out in full.

Warren, I took those courses a long time ago. I don’t remember every detail, and since we didn’t dunk kids, I wouldn’t know how to do it “safely,” because that particular skill was never taught to us. So, I guess, by your standards, that would make me “beyond stupid.”

@SKL

How it got started, was by people who have read books, taken some lessons, and others who do not know how to swim, attacking an experienced instructor and lifeguard for the methods he uses, and used. Methods taught by governing bodies that control certification.

All in a forum that is supposed to be free range. Part of which is allowing kids to deal with things, such as a little adversity. But like any other forum, the people in here will talk the talk, and walk the walk until it gets to their own kids. Then they are just as weak, full of it as the people they discussed. Just like alot of the tree huggers. Give me solar, give me windpower, just don’t put the turbine or panels near my home.

Fairweather free range parents is what most of you are.