Water training recommended

By Jina Tedmori
Daily Forty-Niner

Two boys fell into the Los Angeles River and drowned Oct. 25 while trying to cross the flood control channel near Anaheim Street.

In California, Arizona, Texas and Florida drowning is the leading cause of death for infants and young children. According to the Infant Swimming Research Web site, drowning is an epidemic for United States children under the age of four.

"Many kids don't know how to swim or aren't as strong of swimmers as they or their parents think," Huntington Beach firefighter and paramedic Darrin Witt said.

The ISR Web site recommends survival swimming training for children as early as six months old. During water training, the site said, children should learn to turn on their backs, rest, breathe and flip over to swim.

But the American Academy of Pediatrics disagrees.

The AAP does not recommend swimming lessons until the age of five for two reasons. First, parents may get a false sense of security because they think their child can swim. Second, young children have a higher risk of getting infections from dirty water or possibly getting sick from swallowing too much water.

Watersafe Swim School, located in Seal Beach and Orange, has been teaching infants and children for 20 years. The school begins training infants before the age of six months.

"We have a binder of stories about children that have saved themselves from drowning by turning over and floating," said Karen Glassman, a Watersafe Swim School spokeswoman.

Watersafe Swim School has also been featured on "Date-Line" and "Primetime Live."

"My children have gone through the training and they, like others, have fallen into bodies of water and saved themselves," Glassman said. "The ability to swim gave my daughter so much self-esteem at such a young age."

The floating techniques the swim school teaches are the differences between life and death since younger children are top heavy.

"Many younger kids have heads that are heavy so they sink quite often," Witt said.  "Children need a more ready supply of oxygen than adults so the damage to a child's brain can be apparent very quickly."

Studies done by the AAP, however, do not support the results of the Watersafe Swim School. The AAP concluded that swimming lessons at an earlier age does not translate into a higher swimming proficiency.

Despite differing in age recommendations, water safety training is stressed by the Watersafe Swim School, Infant Swimming Research and the AAP.