Some Say Swim Lessons Save Toddler Lives; Others See Potential Dangers

Sandy Kalpakoff of Placentia gently handed down her daughter, Analise, to the swimming instructor standing waist-deep in the pool. Holding the little girl under her arms, the instructor promptly dunked her and then let go. Bobbing back to the surface, the girl instinctively turned over and began back floating, her hands resting behind her head and her feet kicking.

Analise is 10 months old.

Shaun Ober of Orange confidently stepped up to the plywood block at the end of the pool and jumped in. With his head alternately submerged and surfacing for air, he dog-paddled the length of the 10-yard-long pool.

Shaun is 2 years old.

As Analise Kalpakoff and Shaun Ober illustrate, children can be taught to float and swim at surprisingly early ages.

But as warm weather beckons and parents enroll their young children in swimming classes, some doctors and safety experts are raising the question: Should they?

The issue pits swim instructors and parents against medical experts who say swimming lessons for infants and toddlers can pose health hazards, including gastrointestinal infections caused by unsanitary swimming conditions, water intoxication--a dangerous condition caused by swallowing excessive amounts of water--and even drowning.

On the other side are Orange County swimming instructors and parents who say properly taught classes are invaluable. The bottom line, they insist, is that they save toddlers’ lives.

Although official county statistics are not yet available, National Drowning Prevention Network figures show five Orange County children under age 5 drowned in 1988. So far this year, the network reports, there have been five drowning deaths of children under 5, including one of three toddlers who fell into a North Tustin baby-sitter’s pool in March. In March, 15 children under 5 were taken to emergency rooms because of near-drowning incidents, according to preliminary statistics from the county Health Care Agency.

Swimming school owners say newspaper accounts of such incidents typically increase the number of parents calling to enroll their young children. Pool safety is also on the minds of parents who sign up for the many parent-child water-orientation programs offered throughout the county.

While acknowledging that toddler swimming classes can provide enjoyment for both child and parent while helping youngsters become comfortable in the water, a health advisory published by the California Medical Assn. counsels parents to avoid programs that encourage submersion of infants’ and toddlers’ heads or promise to “waterproof” or “drownproof” them. The American Academy of Pediatrics also discourages swimming instruction for children younger than 3.

“I have no real quarrel with people who want to get the kids in the water with their mother and father and splash around and have a good time,” said Dr. Mark D. Widome, the Hershey, Pa.-based chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on accident and poison prevention. “But we really feel it’s inappropriate to try to make a child ‘water-safe’ before the age of 3 and certainly would not want anybody to believe their child is in any way protected from drowning because of a class he took as an infant.”

Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the California Medical Assn. say young children who participate in swimming programs in which their heads are submerged run the risk of water intoxication which, on occasion, has led to seizures.

“It happens when a child is not being watched carefully,” Widome said. “The child just gulps water continuously and makes himself sick, causing abnormal dilution of the blood.”

Toddler swimming programs can also be unsanitary, Widome said. “Since you’re dealing with a group of children who are not toilet-trained,” he said, various diseases can be spread from child to child, particularly in a pool that is not properly chlorinated.

But the academy’s primary objection to swimming classes for children under age 3 is that the instruction may give parents a false sense of security about the child’s swimming ability, Widome said. As a result, parents may become less vigilant in supervising their children around water.

Protect Our Kids, a drowning prevention program sponsored by the Orange County Trauma Society, takes a similar stand.

“Swimming classes are certainly a very pleasant experience for children: warm water, a fun time for families, recreation and sunlight,” said Dr. Ralph W. Rucker, the group’s co-chairman and director of the Childrens Hospital of Orange County pulmonary division. “But in terms of being an actual preventive for drowning, there is really no evidence that it works.”

In compliance with guidelines for children under age 3 established by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Council for National Cooperation in Aquatics, the American Red Cross has begun implementing its new Infant and Preschool Aquatic Program across the nation.

Patrick Baker, director of health and safety services for the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross, said the parent-participation program will focus on water orientation and swimming readiness skills with an emphasis on “fun and socialization.” He said the classes will be taught by Red Cross-trained instructors at Red Cross-authorized pools throughout the county and are in no way intended to imply that participants will become “water-safe” or “drownproof.”

Baker advises parents to be wary of any program that makes such promises.

“A child of that age cannot learn or comprehend those particular skills,” Baker said. “Regardless of the number of times young children are exposed to the water, they can’t be expected to comprehend potentially dangerous situations or to rely on their skill development to save their own lives.”

Swimming instructor Ginny Flahive strongly disagrees.

Flahive, owner of the Water Safe Swim School in Seal Beach and Anaheim, said babies and toddlers who have been properly taught to back float or swim may indeed be able to stay afloat after accidentally falling into a pool.

“It’s extra insurance,” said Flahive. “We wear our seat belts when riding in cars for safety, but we all realize that it does not guarantee we won’t be hurt or even killed in the event of a collision. Knowing how to swim is like wearing that seat belt.”

Flahive emphasizes, however, “that no child is ever guaranteed water-safe, and no matter how good a swimmer any baby, child or adult is, they must be under constant supervision, and the most ideal situation for pool safety would be to fence or securely cover your pool--and teach your child to swim.”

John Bainbridge, director of the Australian Swim School, which has four Orange County locations, agrees.

Despite the swimming school’s advertisement in the telephone book (“Pool Safe Your Baby-Toddler”), Bainbridge said: “There is no such thing as a pool-safe child who can swim on his own and not be supervised.”

But, he maintains, if a young child accidentally falls into a swimming pool, having had lessons can give the child a distinct advantage over one who has not learned to float or swim.

“A lot of doctors and pediatricians who are not recommending (swimming classes) do not know what infants can do,” he said.

Bainbridge said the infant and toddler swimming issue is a major concern among swimming school owners nationwide “because for years we’ve been fighting people who are misinformed on infant swimming.”

In fact, he said, the newly formed National Swim School Assn., which represents 148 swim schools from around the country, will devote its September conference in San Francisco exclusively to the issue and will formulate guidelines for teaching swimming to infants and toddlers.

“We’re trying to tidy up our own act, so all people working with infant swimming get an accredited program through the association,” he said, adding that it takes an instructor about a year to learn how to work with an infant properly.

About 25% of the 35 to 45 near-drowning victims admitted to Childrens Hospital of Orange County each year have had swimming lessons, according to Dr. Rucker.

Flahive’s response: What type of swimming lessons did those children receive?

“Swimming to me means the child should be able to recover for breaths or to back float unassisted,” said Flahive, adding that most children who drown are under age 3. “Merely teaching a child to jump in and return to the wall is not enough. Merely telling a child to stay away from the water is not enough.”

Both Flahive and Bainbridge teach back floating to children as young as 3 months old. Flahive said 5-minute lessons, followed by 20 minutes of water play, are adequate at the start.

At the Australian Swim School, where infants and toddlers make up about 90% of the school’s students under age 5, back floating is taught during one-on-one, half-hour lessons three times a week for about 5 weeks. The younger the child, Bainbridge said, the slower he is taken through the program.

“We tell parents what they’ve taught them is a skill that can save their (children’s) lives, but the best way to prevent their drowning is through supervision,” he said, adding that it is impossible to predict whether a child will hit his head or panic and swallow a mouthful of water after accidentally falling into a pool.

“If we save just one infant in Orange County, I know the program we’re doing is good,” he said.

In fact, Bainbridge said, he has six letters on file from parents of former students who found their young children in pools fully clothed but floating safely on their backs after accidentally falling in.

Caroline Dement of Irvine is one of those parents. Daughter Erica was a year old when she learned to back float at the school. Because of that, Dement said, she wasn’t sure her daughter needed to continue with swimming lessons. Then one day, “in the dead of winter and fully clothed,” Erica rode her tricycle into the back-yard swimming pool.

Dement was inside when she heard her daughter crying. She found the tricycle at the bottom of the pool and her daughter “doing the most perfect back float.”

“I didn’t have to decide anymore if I was going to continue with swimming lessons,” said Dement. “The instant I saw her, it made me realize you’re around water all your life, and the younger you learn to have that skill the better off you are.”

Today Erica, now 7, is on a swim team, and Dement’s 2-year-old son is taking lessons.

While acknowledging that “there isn’t anything that will replace supervision,” Dement said Erica’s learning how to float “saved her life.”

Tina Samuelson of Fullerton said her son, Daniel, has never been afraid of the water. That may explain why, during a back-yard Fourth of July party last year when Daniel was 2, he “just decided to go swimming and walked right into the pool.”

Samuelson heard the splash and looked over to see her son, who had been taught by Flahive, come to the top, roll over and start floating on his back.

“I was surprised he handled it on his own. We hadn’t been coming to lessons that long,” Samuelson said. At 3, Daniel can swim, doing a crawl stroke, the length of a 25-yard pool, she said.

Sandy Kalpakoff credits early swimming lessons with saving the lives of two of her three children.

Two years ago while her son, Noah, was staying at a friend’s house, the friend looked out an upstairs window and saw something moving underneath the spa cover. It was 3-year-old Noah, whom the friend found, fully clothed, floating on his back.

“He wasn’t crying or making any noise,” said Kalpakoff. Noah had been taught by Flahive to back float when he was 8 months old and has continued to take swimming lessons.

Kalpakoff said her older son, Shaun, fell into their back-yard pool fully clothed when he was 3 and came up in the floating position. The boy’s father, who was gardening nearby and heard the splash, handed a net to the boy and pulled him in.

Had it not been for swimming lessons, Kalpakoff said, “my children could have been a statistic.”

Such anecdotes do nothing to sway Widome.

“Clearly this whole question is highly controversial, and there are very good people who will argue both sides,” he said. “On the other hand, you have to ask yourself how it was that a child was unsupervised and walked into the pool, and whether lack of vigilance, perhaps because of the child’s swimming lessons, may have contributed to that.”

Citing a lack of scientific studies on the subject, Widome said: “Anecdotal evidence is interesting, but it doesn’t speak in support of infant swimming lessons. I think there’s no substitute for supervision. I think in the public mind these classes serve as an additional protective function, and I think these classes have achieved that reputation not based on any evidence other than a few stories.”

Widome stressed that swimming lessons are important, “particularly if you live in California or someplace where water is a recreation--but at the proper age. I think for everything there is a proper age. (Americans) have a tendency to do things at younger and younger ages, and I think with swimming lessons, it’s gotten too young.”

CLIPBOARD: Where to teach your toddler or infant to swim in Orange County. Page 2.