May 26, 2008 11:00 pm US/Eastern
Swimming To Safety
AMBLER, Pa. (CBS 3) ―
Opening the pool is a Memorial Day tradition and it comes with a responsibility to keep little ones safe.
Drowning is the second leading cause of injury-related death to children according to the National Safe Kids Campaign.
Now a water safety course in at the YMCA in Ambler, Pennsylvania teaches infants and toddlers to survive and even swim to safety while stressing the importance of adult supervision and fencing around pools. CBS 3's Susan Barnett reports.
It happens in an instant. A toddler reaching for a toy falls into a swimming pool.
Sadly it's an all-too-often fatal scenario.
But there are babies who are learning how to survive by kicking their way to the surface to float and cry for help.
An invaluable skill that babies are learning through a program called Infant Swimming Resource or ISR for short.
"This is teaching a child to save her life or his life," explains Barbara Gorman, a certified ISR Instructor who teaches the course at the YMCA in Ambler.
"The first thing we stress is that you need to take all sorts of precautions to keep your kids safe in the water, pool fences, parent supervision, always you have to have 24 hour supervision," stresses Barbara.
"Our program is only in place so that if all those other precautions break down that the kids still have a fighting chance," she said.
Barbara uses hand cues to teach the children to know when to hold their breath. Eight-month-old Georgia is one of her students.
"She uses her legs to kick her around so she's face up, she uses her arms and turns her head and when she comes up she gets a nice breath of air and then she's able to float," said Barbara.
Older children learn more than floating, they learn to swim to the safety of the edge of the pool.
One mom admitted it was hard to see her little baby in the water.
"But I know it's good for her, I mean it's good for her to learn," said Suzanne Hummel Smith.
Suzanne recalled a terrible childhood memory of seeing a small boy drown.
"And I never forgot that, it was traumatic watching the mother running up the beach with her child limp in her arms, it was horrible. So I would never want anything like to that happen to one of my own children," she explained.
The Infant Resource Swimming claims that after four weeks of lessons, babies can learn the skills they need to survive.
"It's amazing, how now she knows when she's swimming, she needs a breath, she flips over and floats, relaxes for a second, swims again and just keeps doing it," says Beth Kingeter as she watches her toddler daughter.
She adds, "Obviously it's our responsibility to watch her and keep an eye on her but you know, you never know, it's that quick second when they are out of your sight, and this gives you a little extra peace of mind."
The Infant Swimming Resource program is open to children ages six months to six years old.
RELATED LINKS:
Safe Kids USA
Infant Swimming Resource of Philadelphia
American Red Cross
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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