Lifeguards and my kids

My kids could swim before they could walk. They took swim lessons starting at 6 months. We went year round to this wonderful indoor pool. We loved it. Many people think you should not teach children to swim so young, I always thought it was great. It does come with it's own set of problems.

Most people are not prepared to see a 2 year old jump off the side of the pool and swim. This is something I was always needing to remind myself.

Once we were on vacation and went to the pool. It was my oldest daughter who was 14, my son who was 4 and my baby girl who was 2. When we got to the pool the entire shallow end was packed. No one was at the deep end which was maybe 4ft, dd14 and I could touch. So we went to the deep end. Dd14 jumped in and I was still putting all of our stuff in chairs. The two littles ones each had swim noodles, they asked me if they could get in, I told dd14 to watch them. They threw their noodles in and I was putting towels in our chairs. Suddenly I hear a woman scream, I turn to see her throw her book and run to the side of the pool. I run to the side of pool, which is about 3 feet from me, thinking her kid is drowning. I get to the side and see my two swimming to their noodles. She looks at me and says I thought they couldn't swim. I tell her they swim very well and their big sister is right there. After that I always made sure I was sitting on the side of the pool or in the pool where they were jumping in. I did this even if my older kids were in the pool with the little ones.

Another time we were at the public pool that has this wonderful short fast water slide. I was in the water with the kids. They asked if they could go down the slide. They had done this many times before and most of the lifeguards at the pool knew them. I am in the water and ds 6 comes down the slide and swims to the side. DD who was 4 at the time comes down the slide and this time there is a new lifeguard at the slide when she sees dd coming down the slide and no one at the bottom to catch her she jumps in. DD starts swimming towards me and the lifeguard is swimming after her. After a few seconds she stops looks at dd, me and the other lifeguards. The other lifeguard tells her my kids can swim. The lifeguard laughs and says oh well it was hot anyways.

There are to many stories like this to write about. There was the time we went to a public pool with friends dd was 2 and ds 4. My friend had kids the same age who could swim. The girls were about to go off the diving board and the life guards all started blowing their whistles and screaming. They made the girls get off the diving board. Got all 4 of our kids and made them take a swim test before they would let them in the pool. I do not think that was standard policy.

Maybe if they did make all kids take a swim test before they could get in the pool we would have less drownings. I was never mad at the lifeguards or strangers for trying to make sure my kids safe. Just embarrassed. I was always right there. ALWAYS.

This post is getting to long so I will write what made me start thinking about all this later.