Saturday, January 19, 2008

Keeping Your Kids Safe Around Water

During the summertime, going swimming is something that a lot of families like to do, but there are only a few of us lucky enough to have a safe swimming area in the backyard. Going to the river, the creek, or even the ocean can be dangerous, but you may not think about the dangers that can exist on your own property. If you do have the privilege of owning your own swimming pool, there are some safety rules that you need to have followed by all the members of your household if you are going to have a safe summer.

When it comes to having a pool, children that live in the home or in neighboring homes should be taken into account. One thing that every pool needs to have around it is a fence to keep not only intruders, but also neighborhood children out of it. This is for privacy reasons as well as safety, since if a child from the community manages to get in your pool and drowns, you are completely responsible because it was not sufficiently blocked off. However, if you have a fence around the pool and it is locked, the likelihood of this happening is extremely reduced.

Something that you can use to keep your own children safe and out of the pool when you do not want them in it is a product called Safety Turtle, which is a wrist strap that you put on the child and when it is exposed to water, it causes the base station that comes with it to sound a loud alarm that tells you the child is in the pool. If you have small children that you cannot always keep track of and you want to make sure they stay away from the pool, this is the best product to give you peace of mind.

If you are going to have a pool, you should also put a good amount of thought into learning CPR and other first aid techniques. Community pools have lifeguards on duty at all times, but when you are in the privacy of your own home, you do not have this benefit, so you need to learn these things yourself in case an accident occurs.

Please make sure that your children and the adults in your house all know that running outside around the pool is not acceptable. This is extremely dangerous and has been known to end in extreme head injuries and even death.