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Updated: December 14, 2021 @ 11:26 am
With the assistance of a “boat” and her mother, Leighton Sayer kicks her legs in the direction of a rubber duck that floats in the Citrus Memorial Health System YMCA pool in Lecanto. The child’s mother, Dana, assists her as the two participate in the Y’s parent and child swim lesson class.
YMCA swim instructor Carlie Pearcy works with 18-month-old Leighton Sayer Friday morning, Dec. 10, at the Y’s pool in Lecanto.
Dana Sayer works with her daughter Leighton, 18 months, Friday morning at the Citrus Memorial Health Foundation YMCA in Lecanto. The two are participating in the parent and child swim lesson class that teaches young children basic swim skills should they fall into water.
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With the assistance of a “boat” and her mother, Leighton Sayer kicks her legs in the direction of a rubber duck that floats in the Citrus Memorial Health System YMCA pool in Lecanto. The child’s mother, Dana, assists her as the two participate in the Y’s parent and child swim lesson class.
YMCA swim instructor Carlie Pearcy works with 18-month-old Leighton Sayer Friday morning, Dec. 10, at the Y’s pool in Lecanto.
Dana Sayer works with her daughter Leighton, 18 months, Friday morning at the Citrus Memorial Health Foundation YMCA in Lecanto. The two are participating in the parent and child swim lesson class that teaches young children basic swim skills should they fall into water.
We’ve all read something like this before and cringed.
“A 3-year-old child was pronounced dead after he was found unresponsive in the family’s swimming pool when he got out of the home undetected.”
It’s the kind of headline that’s appeared in almost every Florida newspaper and in almost every Florida county at one time or another. Only a few facts change with each drowning: sometimes it’s a toddler, a boy, a girl, a child maybe five or 10. But the consequences to the victim and their grieving families are always the same.
In 2021, there were 93 child drownings in Florida and 65 percent of those were children three years old and younger. Most were in family pools.
Child drownings are avoidable with proper safety precautions to keep a child out of the pool, said YMCA’s senior membership director in Citrus County, Garrett Adkins. But the best and last line of defense is teaching a baby or toddler swimming basics such as floating on their back, kicking and arm movements, and getting to the edge of the pool or steps to wait for help.
The YMCA recently created a partnership with Citrus Memorial Hospital to allow any baby born at the hospital to receive lessens teaching the infant to float on its back and make elemental motions with its arms and legs and to try keep its face out of the water.
The program will focus on 6-month-olds to babies a year old, but will still accept children a little older under the partnership with CMH.
It’s about buying a baby time in case they fall in the water, Adkins said. That’s because it only takes seconds for a baby to drown so buying seconds is important, he said.
The statistics are frightening.
More children in the United States ages 1 year to 4 years old die from drowning than any other cause of death except birth defects, according to the Centers for Disease and Prevention.
For children ages 1 year to 14 years, drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional injury death only after motor vehicle crashes, according to the CDC.
David Reed, Citrus County YMCA’s executive director, said that while coming home from a Naples Rotary Club meeting he thought about duplicating some of that organization’s programs, but through the YMCA. However, he wanted the services to have a greater impact and came up with exposing infants to water safety.
When a child drowns and it could have been avoided if the child had been a better swimmer, “we take that personal,” Reed said.
The YMCA has a heated and covered pool.
The partnership with CMH involves giving new parents a voucher inviting the parents to bring their baby for eight swim sessions over a four-week period.
The free program does not involve babies in the water without a parent.
“This is a parent/child swim lesson,” Adkins said. “We don’t just throw them in.”
It’s about buying the baby time if they fall in water and an adult realizes soon later what’s happened.
“Buying them 60 seconds could mean the difference between life and death,” Adkins said.
The swim classes will also allow the baby’s first experience with water and swimming to be positive and relaxing.
“We want them to respect the water but not fear it,” Reed said.
CMH delivers about 500 babies annually. That number will increase now that Bravera Seven Rivers hospital will no longer deliver babies.
The partnership with CMH will also have its benefits.
“We’re only stronger as a community when we have partnerships and CMH is a great partner,” Reed said.
CMH spokeswoman Katie Myers said the program was one more way to make children safer so CMH wanted to be part of it.
“We want all babies to have a strong, healthy start. We also want parents to have access to resources they need to provide the safest possible environment for their little ones. At Citrus Memorial Hospital, we have long focused on childbirth education classes…,” Myers told the Chronicle.
“Drowning remains one of the leading causes of death for children four and under. By partnering with the YMCA we can ensure more infants have access to swim lessons and families can learn water safety basics early on,” she said. “We’re encouraging all families who deliver with us to participate in this free program as we work together to reduce the risk of accidental childhood drowning.”
Adkins said that once a child makes it to water “(swim lessons are) the number one way we can protect children … and it’s a lifelong skill once you acquire it.”
Fred Hiers is a reporter at the Citrus Chronicle. E-mail him at [email protected]
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