Tips For Keeping Your Young Swimmers Safe

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- More and more people will be looking for ways to cool off as school breaks for summer and the temperatures heat up.

Before your family heads to the pool or the lake, experts say it is important to keep safety top of mind -- and that starts with swim lessons.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about ten people die from drowning every day. Of those 10, two are kids 14 or younger.

"The most important thing to remember is parents are their child's lifeguard," Alicia Kockler, Life Time Fitness' senior national aquatics director, said. "Just because there are lifeguards present at the beach or the pool, parents need to be watching intently."

Kockler recommends parents enroll kids in swim lessons early, before they turn one.

"When you do that, the children remember the water environment in the womb, and it just lays that great foundation of loving water and being comfortable in the water," Kockler said.

Swim lessons at Life Time Fitness are offered indoors year-round. They follow a 25:10 rule: if kids cannot swim 25 meters, parents are required to be within 10 feet of them.

"At the end of the day, you can save yourself or be far less likely to drown if you can make it that distance," Kockler said.

Lifeguards are always looking for heads up above water, but there are other things they look for.

"When someone is near drowning or active drowning, they're bobbing up and down in the water, they're not making forward progress or movement. Those are kind of the main, tell-tale signs that someone's in trouble," she said.

Kockler says it is especially important for parents to be extra vigilant at lakes because you often cannot see the bottom.