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Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

spotthedrowningchild.com

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Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#141

Post by keanzu »

alistairSH wrote: post #131
falcolas wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal opinion, based off my own experience and teaching other children how to swim: Flotation devices have no part to play in teaching how to swim. Parents (or teachers) holding their children and teaching them how to float is step 1. Only after the child can handle themselves in water (float, know when to breathe) should they be playing with flotation devices.

We should clarify that PFDs (life-jackets) are probably good for young children and new swimmers. It's the floating toys that might actually be harmful. And one skill that swimmers need, but cannot really get with an float-assist device, is putting their face in the water. I watched an adult friend learn to swim, and this was REALLY hard for him. Crazy enough - he was ex-Royal Navy submariner, so he had passed basic…

> cannot really get with an float-assist device, is putting their face in the water.

We used kickboards for this exact purpose. So you can float face down with arms outstretched holding the board. You can transition to freestyle swimming taking one hand off the board at a time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM3z1eDDcGE

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#143

Post by wjnc »

How are things related to swimming education in different countries? In the Netherlands swimming lessons are a pretty basic parental 'requirement'. Former decades had school swimming, but that fell out of grace due to costs and liability issues. I've been taking my sons for lessons for what feels like ages already (about 1.5 years weekly, now twice a week, with about max. a year to go). At that point they are pretty good swimmers, even fully clothed including jackets and it's my responsibility to keep practicing. How is that internationally? It feels quite irresponsible to take children without training to swimming pools, but that might my local customs focus. Swimming is a hard technique to master though.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#144

Post by biztos »

rtkwe wrote: post #135
alistairSH wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of these samples are also in a wave pool. And crowded. I assume with all of the above, drowning risk is much higher in these pools. It's a shame that swimming/water survival aren't a part of school in the US. Knowing how to tread water and doggy paddle are valuable, life-saving skills.

It's partially because if you can teach them those skills you can probably also teach them to swim full stop. A big difficulty with that is most schools would also have to travel to get access to a pool. I've only gone to one school before college that had a pool and it was a charter school on a local college campus so they had access to that pool, some schools might have to travel 30m-1h to get to a pool if they're…

When I was a kid in the 70's in rural California, we were bussed almost an hour to a bigger school for mandatory swimming lessons. I don't remember at what age but it was elementary school, I think maybe 5th-6th grade. Several grades were grouped together.

Most (all?) of us could already "swim" basically, since there were lakes and rivers near the small towns and kids usually got free swimming lessons around age 5. The bigger lessons were about the various (then) standard strokes, pool safety and basic lifesaving, how not to accidentally kill yourself on a diving board, swimming laps instead of just swimming around, etc.

I absolutely hated it (too many strangers, why didn't we have our own pool, my endurance was crappy, I was afraid of the deep) -- but I'm glad they made us do it instead of letting us wimp out.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#145

Post by zaroth »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #120
Hamuko wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long of a shift do lifeguards even have? Because I wouldn't feel confident in being able to observe a bunch of people in a pool for hours for what are quite subtle clues.

I was a lifeguard at Disney World (Disney lifeguards work the waterparks, all the resort pools, and the pool and the lake at the private cast member park, Mickey's Retreat) in the late 90s. I believe at the time it was 20 minutes on duty, 5-10 minutes rotating to the next station. There would always be a couple lifeguards rotating in this scheme and they'd able to assist if necessary. It was very boring, and keeping…

I think a pool closed for 3 days indicates gross mismanagement of chemical levels, not that contamination in public pools can’t be successfully managed.

In theory a public pool under proper management should be cleaner than a private pool which almost certainly isn’t being professionally managed.

Chlorine in pH balanced water with the right hardness is surprisingly effective. Pro tip, if you can smell “chlorine” it probably means the pool is dirty and doesn’t have enough chlorine left in the water. The smell is not chlorine in the water, it’s the result of the chlorine burning off as it oxidizes contaminants.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#146

Post by pmarreck »

angstrom wrote: post #112
_ph_ wrote: post #89

I am impressed by these videos any time the pop up on hacker news. But one thing struck me: that they are using those large floatation rings. A lot of the incidents seem to be where a child looses contact to the ring and then cannot swim on itself. I am wondering, why they are allowed at all. In my personal experience, I have rarely seen such rings in public pools and that basically means, you are not getting far int…

I could spot the person fairly easily, but that's either luck or because I can't swim, so I was looking for the person doing what I would be doing.

Please learn to swim. It's never too late. Plus, it's fun. Plus, it's classy. Plus, you won't be caught "in over your head" (sorry) in situations like this. Humans are meant to learn to swim IMHO. The instinctive response is just a "stub" that is expected to be built upon, similar to language ability and crawling->walking and other human things. (Humans don't naturally walk unless they are taught to, did you know that? Source: Sadly, a handful of humans were raised by other animals over the years, and none of them walked naturally when discovered.)

When I went to Cornell, learning to swim was a mandatory requirement. If you didn't pass the "swim 2 laps" swim test they gave you right off the bat, your first assigned P.E. class would be a swim class. (Apparently, one of the large Cornell donors stipulated this as part of his donation. Possibly, someone in their immediate family had died due to lack of being able to swim.)

You say you don't look good in a bathing suit? Swimming will teach you not to care. Hell, if you're heavy, staying close to the water surface is actually easier. And you can get great exercise WITHOUT putting the stress on your joints that pretty much every other exercise will do to you if you're heavy. (Note: I'm a bit overweight, so I get it. I get it.)

Did I mention it's fun? If you're an adult, you will feel like a kid again.

You say you don't live near a coast? Well, when you go on vacation and are near a beach, you can actually go into the water fearlessly! And surely, there's a pool of some sort nearby.

Don't be afraid. Don't care what others think. Please consider it.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#147

Post by lucb1e »

amitry wrote: post #138

Any thoughts/experience with systems like the Coral Manta 3000? https://coraldrowningdetection.com/

In the videos from the "article", the pool guard jumped in while the person is still trying to get above the water. They never lose consciousness and get away with a scare.

This system is "trained to detect people under-water" and in the demo it only starts beeping after about 6 seconds of no movement while the person is on the bottom of the pool. So the person first has to get exhausted, sink, stop moving, and then the system catches on that something is wrong. I guess if you get oxygen into the person fast enough, they can make a full recovery, but in the context of a pool this should not replace lifeguards. At home, this is better than nothing, though I wonder if actual (near-)drownings would go up or down because of the sense of security.

Edit: the About page confirms it:

> Without air in your lungs, your body sinks [...] For children, irreversible damage to the brain tissues typically starts to occur after about 4-5 minutes without oxygen, (for adults it is after about 3-4 minutes). $product detects when a person sinks, meaning seconds after she or he stopped breathing

Detecting people that have gotten lungs full of water and are unconscious at the bottom of a pool is better than not detecting that, but it doesn't sound like pool guard or proper parenting can be replaced just yet, even if it might be a helpful last-resort aid.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#148

Post by falcolas »

alistairSH wrote: post #131
falcolas wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal opinion, based off my own experience and teaching other children how to swim: Flotation devices have no part to play in teaching how to swim. Parents (or teachers) holding their children and teaching them how to float is step 1. Only after the child can handle themselves in water (float, know when to breathe) should they be playing with flotation devices.

We should clarify that PFDs (life-jackets) are probably good for young children and new swimmers. It's the floating toys that might actually be harmful. And one skill that swimmers need, but cannot really get with an float-assist device, is putting their face in the water. I watched an adult friend learn to swim, and this was REALLY hard for him. Crazy enough - he was ex-Royal Navy submariner, so he had passed basic…

PFDs are a safety device, they’re great. If you think your child might be unsupervised, putting one on is safer than not. But as a teaching aide, they’re terrible.

You can’t swim with a lifejacket. You can only float (and in a position that is different from how you would naturally float in water).

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#149

Post by inanutshellus »

falcolas wrote: post #123
Nasrudith wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason for floatation devices is a transitionary measure to get them more used to and practiced in "preswimming" while participating and not simply wading or pool side clinging. They are just often misused - you are supposed to be supervising them when they are in the pool period and they only need deep enough water to keep their feet off the ground.

Personal opinion, based off my own experience and teaching other children how to swim: Flotation devices have no part to play in teaching how to swim. Parents (or teachers) holding their children and teaching them how to float is step 1. Only after the child can handle themselves in water (float, know when to breathe) should they be playing with flotation devices.

Arm floaties are a crutch that ought never be used. If your kid isn't strong enough to swim on their own, don't give yourself the false sense of security that comes with floaties.

As an anecdote, they almost killed a friend's daughter a few years ago.

She had jumped and fallen forward, and her arm floaties moved her buoyancy to her stomach-area, forcing her face into the water. Scary stuff.

She was even in a swimming pool she could stand in.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#150

Post by keanzu »

lzol wrote: post #139
keanzu wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are toys that are fun to play with for people who can swim fine. The problem is when non-swimmers use them as boats. They are not safety devices. Without the rings non-swimmers couldn't get into trouble but swimmers have less fun. You could also pave over the pool with concrete and remove the hazard entirely - no fun for swimmers but all risks of drowning removed.

As someone who worked as a wave pool lifeguard for 8 years and is a current certified Water Safety Instructor, I mostly agree. The large rafts are never really what I have an issue with. It's water wings and other personal flotation devices that are much more troublesome. Parents are a huge part of the issue. PFDs give them a false sense of security where they feel like they don't have to watch their kid. The best ch…

Somehow people don't realize the danger that pools possess.

Swimming is one of the few activities that children engage in which can go so wrong as to end up in their death. I would suggest that it is borderline negligence for a parent to put a child in such a dangerous situation without proper precautions (supervision). I wouldn't let a small child I am responsible for go into a pool alone regardless of the presence of lifeguards. Especially not a wave pool.

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