Baby Otter Swim Lessons

I finally made the call.

In addition to the horrible statistics:
• Drowning is the #1 cause of death for children ages 1 to 4 in Florida.
• 75% of victims are ages 12 to 25 months old.
• 65% drown in the family pool.
• 33% drown in a neighbors’ or relatives’ pool.
• For every child that drowns, 4 are hospitalized for near drowning.
• 77% were missing less than 5 minutes.

I just want my baby to know how to save himself if he falls in the pool……and I want him to enjoy the water as much as I did as a kid. We live in Florida. That is what kids do here. They spend their days in the pools and at the beach.

Jax will be 2 in a month and we have taken him in our pool quite frequently, but we are not qualified to teach him survival skills. Lately he has gotten extremely bold and goes onto our first and second pool step by himself. He also thinks it’s funny to run around the pool. I am terrified of this. Not that he will ever be outside alone, but that isn’t the point. So, I am waiting to hear back from the Baby Otter Swim School so we can schedule his lessons.

We will start with Turn, Kick, Reach:
Turn, Kick, Reach is a five consecutive day program taught to children, as young as ten months, what to do if they fell into the water. They learn to hold their breath and put their face in the water; swim to the steps and wall by kicking and MOST IMPORTANT, to turn around and swim back to where they fell into the water.

Hopefully he will graduate after the 5 days and we can continue on to the next program:
TKR Post-Grad is a small group of children who have graduated from our Turn, Kick, Reach program. We extend the skills they learned in TKR, making them familiar with all parts of the pool. (The skills they learned in TKR are reinforced and expanded to include extending their distance swimming, learning to swim from person to person, and learning how to swim from steps to wall, and wall to steps.) TKR is a prerequisite for this class. This class meets one day per week for eight weeks.

I will update day by day once we get started.

Summer here we come!!!