NEW ORLEANS — Earlier this week toddler cousins drowned after wandering into a pool area at their apartment complex.
The girls were just 1- and 2-years-old. Unfortunately, we have seen a number of drownings over the past few months from children as young as one years old to teenagers and even adults. The YMCA of New Orleans offers swim lessons for people of all ages hoping to prevent another life lost.
Theres nothing better than cooling off in the pool on a hot summer’s day.
“Ma’Kai does really well like I said he’s been doing it for a while. And plus, he’s been swimming in my backyard. Mason, it comes and goes. Either he is going to have a good day or he’s going to have an off day. It depends on his mood,” Martha Ellis Breaux said.
5-year-old Maison is practicing holding his breath and jumping into the pool. He’s following in his big brother, 11-year-old Ma’kai’s, footsteps learning how to swim at the YMCA. Swim lessons at the YMCA start as early as 6 months old- with a ‘Parent and me class’.
“Some of the things they focused on are benchmark water safety skills. So those are things such as swim float swim. Where if your child gets into the water and they are kind of far away from the side they know how to roll to their back, keep that airway open, roll to their back and swim back to the side for safety ,” Taylore Oleking said.
Taylor Oelking is the Executive Director Community Aquatics at the YMCA- she says they teach benchmark water safety skills that are the foundation for all of their swim lessons no matter the age of the swimmer or skill level.
“The other thing that we went over with Mason is how to properly exit the water. So, you’ll hear us a lot around here say elbow, elbow, tummy, knee. So the kids use their own body weight to exit the water,” Taylor Oleking said.
Those 4 swim benchmarks are
- Swim-Float-Swim
- Properly exiting the water using the elbow, elbow, tummy, knee method
- Monkey Crawl
- And the push-turn-grab jump
‘The other thing we worked on with Maison is the monkey crawl, it’s that hand over hand crawl to get to an exit point. If your child is in water that they feel is too deep or they’re scared, they can’t touch the bottom or grasp that wall. They can crawl to the sides to get a safe water exit point,” Taylor Oleking said,
Taylor says the four benchmarks are all safety skills parents can work on at home with their kids.
“The last thing that we did with Maison looks like an average jump. We call it push turn grab. The kid jumps into the water, pushes off the bottom to get to the surface and turn around and reach for that wall,” Taylor Oleking said,
Simple tools that if practiced enough will create muscle memory in case a child really needs it. A situation we hope to never see as parents, but one that happens far too often in our area.
“Louisiana is actually ranked 3rd in drownings and children under the age of fourteen, drowning is the second leading cause of death,” Taylor Oleking said.
For every child who drowns, another five are taken to the hospital after a near drowning and many of them suffer lifelong brain damage.
Four children have died in drownings in the past month alone. The most recent being two toddler girls in metairie who went to an apartment pool unsupervised.
“If you’re thinking about drownings you’re thinking about open bodies or water, correct? More drownings in Louisiana actually happen in neighborhood pools, backyard pools those types of situations. Near drownings, near fatal drownings are statistically higher than fatal drownings,” Taylor Oleking said.
From the sidelines, Martha Ellis Breaux, or Nanna, as she prefers to be called by her grandsons watches them learn to swim.
“I come from a place that um a small area, it’s real country. We had bayous and ditches, but we never went into water like that. We went fishing,” Martha Ellis Breaux said.
She herself never learned how to swim, but as an ER nurse knows how important it is, especially living in Louisiana that her grandchildren learned.
“You’d hear these accidents of kids coming up missing and their parents go out and they are floating in the pool and that is horrible. That is a horrible sight to see and it’s horrible for us as healthcare workers and even worse for the parents,’ Martha Ellis Breaux said.
So, what are ways we can all do a better job at keeping our kids safe? Taylor says it starts with something as simple as paying better attention.
“A lot of time it goes into that lack of supervision. Everyone is at a pool at a party. Everybody thinks everybody is watching everybody’s kids and no one is watching. So, we want to make sure everyone’s kids are supervised in the water. No one ever goes in the water alone,” Taylor Oleking said.
And recognizing when a child is in distress.
“Drowning sometimes looks like playing. Like it looks like a kid trying to do flips to keep their head above water, or they skull or they try to tread and they try to keep that airway open and a lot of people mistake that, that distressed swimmer as someone who is just playing around but really they are in need of help,” Taylor Oleking said.
She says unlike the movies, drowning is often quiet and happens in a split second, that when someone slips below the surface.
Experts say swim safety begins even before you head to the pool or beach this summer by choosing certain color swimsuits for your kids. If you notice Lifeguards wear and use equipment that is red-an easy color to spot in the water or around the pool. They recommend you put your kids in bright colored swim suits like this green paddle board.
“It is important for us as water safety experts, as lifeguards to make sure if somebody loses their airway that we recognize and respond within a minute and a half and get that air into their lungs in that first minute and a half,” Taylor Oleking said.
Taylor says in the past access has also been an issue for families trying to find the right place to teach their children how to swim. She says lessons, can be, not only difficult to find but also to afford.
“We actually teach swim lessons at 6 pools that we operate across the New Orleans Metro area. NORDC teaches swim lessons and Dryads YMCA offers swim lessons. So they are around so there are places, but a lot of times, especially in the past swim lessons were done in someone’s backyard so I think just the lack of knowing where to go,” Oleking said.
The YMCA offers 8, 30 minute lessons for all ages for around $145 dollars.
The YMCA also offers scholarships and have grant funding meaning they will never turn a child away because of money. They also partner with local area schools. Most recently, just before the school year started a local school brought all of their 2nd and 3rd graders for swim lessons.
For Maison and Ma’kai they are just having fun working on their jumps and showing off for Nanna. But, in reality, they are learning the necessary skills to keep themselves safe around the water.
“There are protocols that you need to follow in order to be in the water. And we just really try to teach him water safety and to not be afraid of the water and hopefully it comes along with some of him learning the different techniques that he can learn. If he could learn to float that would make me happy,” Martha Ellis Breaux said.
The YMCA is hosting a water safety day in partnership with PoolCorp on Tuesday June 25th where we will be hosting all the campers from the Covington Boys and Girls Club at our West St Tammany YMCA.
Jefferson Parish Parks and Recreation offers Water Safety lessons for Jefferson Parish residents. These lessons are only $4 dollars and open for registration on the 1st of April.
Taylor says they are already full this year with a growing waitlist she recommends trying to sign up as soon as registration opens if you would like to try again next year.
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