AIBU to ask you to teach your children...

[Larsaleaping]

AIBU to ask you to remind your DC about the dangers of swimming in open water and cold water shock before the next spell of hot weather next week?

The statistics on children drowning in the last couple of years are very scary and it's so easily preventable.

A very good article
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/28/climate/europe-heatwaves-drownings-intl-cmd

When I was at school in the 90s we learnt to swim in year 2. By year 7 I was the only girl from that school in that class that could swim, the other 4 or 5 lined up in the shallow end with the non swimmers. We lived in a coastal area.

So, is teaching children to swim early a good thing or a bad thing?

When I was young I don’t think I knew anyone who couldn’t swim, and as soon as it got warm we were straight off down to the river or into the sea.

We might not have been so keen if we couldn’t swim.

Ex lifeguard here. You are absolutely right. I have told people on several other threads that unsupervised open water swimming is very risky and many have not believed me. I worked in a swimming pool and I would like to also add that every single person I rescued was in shallow water that they could easily stand up in.

Drowning is silent.

The only slightly different rescue was a baby (he couldn’t stand). His mother was in the pool with him in a swimming lesson and fell over. There were 7 other parents in the water plus a swimming teacher and I was the only one who noticed. That baby would have drowned without an attentive lifeguard on duty. But it sounds safe, right? Because there are 8 babies and 9 adults.

@dizzydizzydizzy that is terrifying that nobody noticed but it's so common isn't it?

Teach them early, keep up regular swimming, and teach them about how to swim safely in open water.

When I Iearnt to swim it was all focused on how well you could do a backstroke, and not on any kind of water safety.

I live in a coastal area and there are also lots of lakes and quarries locally where people wild swim. You can guarantee that every bank holiday or heatwave, a young person will get into trouble either through cold water shock, misunderstanding of tides and currents or through getting tangled with something in a quarry. Nearly always, the young person is a competent swimmer.

There are signs up, information about staying safe or keeping clear and every single time, they are ignored. People erroneously equate being able to swim with being able to beat the odds against known risks.

I'm not sure what else can be done to educate people? I tell my students this incessantly when hot weather approaches but they brush me off and tell me they can swim and it's just a good laugh.

YANBU to highlight this. Our local council put on some free sessions a couple of weeks ago at several pools across the county about water safety, float to live etc. worth asking yours if they have something similar and if not why not.

I agree, I was in a swimming club as a child and can do all the strokes including butterfly, but that was all in a heated indoor pool and it's only as an adult that I've learned about how people gasp, swallow water and be well on the way to drowning if they jump in cooler (not necessarily cold) water.

Also the dangers from an acquaintance who is a water rescue specialist in the fire service. However, I'm far less likely to take part in risky behaviour of jumping in, where people get stuck in mud at the bottom of a canal/river, injure themselves on obstructions below the water, get swept away or find they're unable to get out again, but that's what people need to be aware of, ideally learning from an early age.

I saw a poster recently, not sure where it was, but it was the #beamate from page 5 here, encouraging teens to speak up if they see friends taking risks around water. This sort of stuff needs to be prominent on social media, ideally as unskippable adverts.

Download.ashx

It was drowning prevention week a couple of weeks ago so hopefully the message has got out there and people take notice before the next hot spell.

I’d add to this that it can be good to give children the experience of swimming in lifeguarded open water venues and many places this year are running water safety lessons /beginner open water sessions that go through the risks and give you an experience of what it is like so children and teens genuinely understand how different it is from and indoor pool.

For example my local Suffolk swim group is doing an intro/safety course this August

https://brecks.org/events/intro-to-outdoor-swimming-family-session/

and there are many lifeguarded open water venues that offer similar.

https://nowca.org/

YANBU.

The dc have been to swimming lessons since they were little. We still drilled it in to them never to swim in water unless there is a lifeguard present, and to never wild swim.

As a teen I used to go with friends to a lake (well more a large pond) in the middle of woodland to swim when it was hot. I've no idea how we found the place but there was never anyone else there. My parents only complaint was that I came back covered in mud. Anyway one time I got my foot caught in a branch trying to get out and just could not get a purchase to pull it free. I eventually did with my friend helping pull, and suffered noting worse than a cut leg (which I'm probably lucky didn't get infected), but it did put me off after that!