Swimming, Swimming Lessons, and Safety

Hotel swimming pool with wheelchair ramp. Tenerife. Canary Islands. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Falling in Water, Paddling and Swimming Hazards

1 First, what are the hazards? 

2 Secondly Possible prevention? 

3 Thirdly Rescue

1 a In residential pools, children who cannot swim falling into pools.

1b Shelving beaches.

Prevention

Not just warnings on the radio and in newspaper. Flags and multilingual signs on beaches. Patrols by life guards, paid or volunteers. Instructions on helplines, and actions. This might include warnings about shelving and riptides, fines for allowing unaccompanied minors in water known for shelving and ripyides. Instructions to form human chains from land into the sea?

1c Bad weather, storms, waves, and riptides.

2 Safety Solution - Swimming Lessons

In the UK Key stage 2 requires children to have swimming instruction.

What is key stage 2? Ages 7 to 11. 

As far as I can see, this means that by the time a child leaves the school at age 11, it should be able to swim. But it doesn't mean that at 7, 8, 9, or 10 every child must be able to swim.

I read in a forum of comments on a newspaper article that although Key stage 2 in the UK requires that children should be taught to swim, some Councils have found it challenging to put this into practice because of the closure of public pools. In that case, in my opinion, parents and others should start local newspaper campaigns to secure funding either from government sources or sponsorship.

3 How about adding swimming lessons for parents? Including life-saving. I know from experience, trying to save my mother who swam into the deep end of a pool, that if you try to rescue a bigger person, facing them, they put their arms around your neck and drag you under with them. You need to approach them from behind and hold their head out of the water.

2  The same lessons for carers.

Instruct children not to swim in open waters, only to swim in pools where other people are nearby, or where there are lifeguards. 

Websites About Swimming, Safety, and Dangers

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15973395/father-saved-boy-drowning-mother-son-swim.html

https://www.swimming.org/schools/swimming-national-curriculum/

https://www.redcross.org.uk/get-involved/teaching-resources/community-education-workshops/first-aid-workshop-for-adults

Free Swimming In Pools

https://be-well.org.uk/what-we-offer/swimming/free-swimming/

Free Swimming Lessons

https://www.southwark.gov.uk/culture-and-sport/leisure-and-sport/swimming/free-swimming-lessons

https://findyour.islington.gov.uk/kb5/islington/directory/service.page?id=wMG2NtgjYTk

Updated text and websites on Monday July 14th 2026.

Swimming Teachers And What They Do For You

I listened to three swimming teachers in the pool at a condo.

Please don't accuse me or eavesdropping. You can hear the swimming teachers shouting instructions even from the 16th floor of our block. Every sound carried. the birds, the crickets, the tennis balls, the childen shrieking and squealing on the slides in the pool and the adjacent playground, despite the signs which include the instruction no noisy play.

Mostly the instructors are shouting instructions, and praise.
"One, two, three!"
"One more time!"
"Well done!"

However, I noticed some interesting new techniques.
One swimming instructor was showing a tiny child how to put ints head under water. The reminder from the instructor was, "Say Pizza. When you go underwater say Pea. When you come up open your mouth to breathe and say, 'Ah'. Pizz-ah. Pizz-ah. Pizzah."

I presume this was breast stroke. Not like I do it. Head up all the way.Head down and up.

I swam back. At the other side of the pool, another instructor was saying to a small child, "Put your ear on your arm. Like sleeping."

I thought, isn't that clever. They don't just show the child what to do. They use the right language to creat an image. To create repetition. So when the child is underwater or practising alone, the instruction is still repeating in their mind.

I could show somebody how to swim. But I would not have the patience to spend an hour doing the same thing over again. Nor the knowledge to watch for what they are doing wrong. Nor to know the right angle for the hands and feet and arms and limbs and body and head. Nor the right words to instruct. nor the right words to encourage.

You can hear the mothers trying to help the children practise. But in almost every case, the mother's voice does not have the authentic focus of the instructor's voice.

Too many distractions from both mother and child. The conversation quickly veers off into the child asking, "When can I have a drink and an ice cream." The mother replies, "We'll go and have tea shortly."   The child, the mother, and I, have all lost interest in the swimming lesson.

But the instructor holds attention.

I watched a child swimming, what appeared to be breast stroke, but head up and down, 'pizza'. I asked my family, "Is that the same breast stroke that I am doing? I like to keep my head up, to see I am not swimming into anybody and aything, and not get wter in my eyes and nose and ears. What is the advantage of swimming with your head under water? Is it quicker or easier?"

My family answered, "Yes. You are nearer to the shape of a fish. Quicker. Less effort. With your head up, your chest is making a dam against the water."

So, now you know what a swimming teacher or instructor does to help. For the right age group.

Get the children into the right habits. Not a scientific explanation which you would give to an adult.

Just the right words. Repeated. Pizza. Pizza. Pizza.

Useful Websites On Swimming and Safety
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swimming_stroke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_signal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_numbers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_swimming

Author
Angela Lansbury

More About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a travel writer and photographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.

Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a language evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and other language clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.

I am President of Braddell Heights Advanced, meeting on zoom the first Wednesday of the month. But the other Wednesdays have workshops on app learncool.sg

Incoming president Faith from July 18th 2020 change dates and platforms so please contact the club.

Latest is only two meetings each month.

For meetings learncool it is quicker to type and easier to remember: 

 tinyurl.com/BHACOOL

Useful Websites On Speaking

https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
translate.google.com
duolingo.com

https://www.facebook.com/groups/polygotcommunity/

Other Useful Posts By Angela Lansbury Author

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogs
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/04/how-to-say-thank-you-in-several.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/05/introducing-yourself-in-english-spanish.html
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2020/01/second-set-of-portuguese-words.html 

Please share links to your favourite posts

Learn to Swim - the life you save could be your own

You may have read that in the USA babies are being taught to swim. Babies. Yes, babies.

Babies Swimming
"Why not?" shrugs a member of my family. "Toddlers can learn to ride trikes."

Let me make an outrageous suggestion. Babies should be taught to swim or float before they leave hospital.

Hospital
I remember going to ante-natal classes. Nothing about swimming.

However, when I was pregnant, I insisted that my husband should learn to swim. I could swim. But what if I was in the toilet or elsewhere when our offspring needed to be fished out of water?

Let me make a second outrageous suggestion. Expectant mothers and women who have given birth should be given a book on first aid and more importantly healthy and sfety and cissident prevention before leaving hospital when pregnant or with a newborn.

Outrageous? Impossible? When I went into the offices of Infineum I could not leave reception for the meeting (of a Toastmasters speakers' training meeting) until I had watched a ten minute safety video (about fire exits etc) and both the receptioist and I had signed that I watched it.

The same when I went to Shell petroleum island off Singapore. (Again, for a Toastmasters speaker's training. I was not going anywhere near the huge containers of oil. But I still had to watch the safety video, about cigarettes, cigarette lighters, cameras and mobile phones causing sparks, safety, evacuation, first aid points, and so on.

At a toastmasters meeting I watched a presentation by somebody who had been caught in a rip tide, showing how you swim parallel to the shore until you are carried in or can escape to the shore.

Even more frequent are swimming accidents in pools at home. So much so that Australia made it manaory to fence in back yard or back garden swimming pools, and promoted the idea on postage stamps. (I saw the stamps and read about this in New Zealand in a stamp collection exhbition at a post office.)

USA - Pool Deaths
Over in the USA, earlier in 2020, a family of three died in the back garden (Americans say back yard) of their new home. They were Indians, an extended family. A girl went into the deep end. two adults died trying to save her.

Sunken Above Ground Pools.
Apparently you can buy back garden pools about five feed deep, with one or two feet of wall above the water level. But you can sink one end into the ground to provide a deep end.

Rockville Maryland Insurance
When I lived in Rockville, Maryland, our condo complex had a pool surrounded by tennis court height wire netting, locked at night and when the two lifeguards were not in attendance. Why two guards? So that one can go to the toilet or for a meal break and you still have one person in attendance.

Rescue
Also it's quite difficult to rescue somebody. They put their hands around your neck and both of you go down together. I know. Because when I was a teenager I tried to rescue my mother. I sreamed and swam towards her. That made two of us under the water. My father jumped in from one end, fully clothed, and another man jumped in from the other end. They managed to separate my mother from me and between the two of them pulled her to the side, each holding one of her arms. Neighter of them thought to help me. I was choking and managed to doggy paddle to the side.

Insurance
If I were in charge of insurance, what would I do? First, I would demand that all schools made it conpulsory to show schoolchildren a video about swimming on day one in assembly. Especially any school with a pool, or a nearby river or canal in their city or countryside.

For household insurance, I would make it mandatory to display signs covering these:
1 The depth of the pool
2 Contact details of swimming video and swimming lessons.
3 Emergency phone.
$ Resuscitation techniques.
A  fence around the pool with a lockable gate.
Rescue rings which can be thrown.
Markings of deep end.
Markings of shallow end, with ladder or stairs at the shallow end to encourage non swimmers to go in at that end.
Pool must not be filled for new occupants of the dwelling unless gate is locked and a swimmer is in attendance whenever non swimmers are in the pool.
One person in each family should be trained in swimming and life saving.

UK Doctor Said - Don;t Swim Alone
In the UK a friend of mine married a doctor and they had a house with a small swimming pool in their back garden. The doctor made it a rule that his wife could never swim alone when he was out. She had to call in a neighbour or phone a friend.

Safety Devices to Install
You can also install swimming pool covers, and alarms to alert you to protect pets or wild animals or intruders, if gates are opened or movemnt is detected.

Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_swimming
Useful Websites On Swimming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swimming_stroke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_signal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_resuscitation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_numbers
https://www.mypoolsigns.com/pool-safety-signs
https://www.swimmingpool.com/pool-living/pool-safety/
AUSTRALIA
https://www.royallifesaving.com.au/training/in-page-features/frequently-asked-questions
NEW ZEALAND
https://www.building.govt.nz/building-code-compliance/f-safety-of-users/pool-safety/guidance-for-pool-owners/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Swimming Safety In the USA and Australia - Lessons For The World

On reading a tragic story about a woman in Florida losing both her small children to an accident (One dead, once critical) in her apartment complex pool, I look at the picture of the swimming pool. It is not gated and the internet news story reports that Florida has more deaths to under fives than any other state.
   I am reminded about safety rules in Australia and other parts of the USA. I visited a Singapore apartment complex (they call the grander ones with swimming pools condos) for a writers' group meeting. The pool was closed off. The reason was a child had just died in the pool. Later I read in the Singapore newspaper that the child had died during a family celebration. I think it might have been a wedding. The mother and the maid (equivalent of a UK au pair or nanny) were both busy preparing food or cleaning and each thought the child was safer with the other person. the child had wandered off and fallen in the pool. Or even jumped in, not realising the depth and danger. I thought back to my earlier overseas stay in the USA and the safety rules in that area.
    USA Safety In Swimming Pools
   When I lived in Rockville, Maryland, way back in the 1980s or 1990s, our complex had safety rules in place. Netting the height of a tennis net surrounded the pool, locking the pool, making it inaccessible to children and adults at all times, except when unlocked by the life guard.
    (The pool was open only in summer. In snowy winter and during cleaning the pool might have been empty or covered, could have frozen over like a dangerous and tempting ice rink, or been concealed under snow.)
   I  understood it was a rule of either or both the local regulations or the insurance that the pool had to be enclosed to prevent access by adults when there was no lifeguard.
    (This prevented all kinds of accidents adults accidents, such as people taken ill, drunks and trespassers) also children (accidents and pranks).
  You had to have two life guards. That ensured somebody could take over if the other one went off to answer a query, eat or use the bathroom/restroom (US terms - UK toilet).      
   The life guards were arranged on a rota. The lifeguards were paid little, but got free use of the pool, experience for a cv. They were often the young adult children of families living in the complex.
   I assumed these rules applied all over the USA, but it must have been only in the suburb of Washington DC where we were living. The Florida pool in a newspaper picture in March 2014 seems to have no barriers.
Australian and New Zealand Safety  in Swimming Pools
   I learned about Australian swimming safety measures when I was on a skiing trip in New Zealand (round trip from UK with stopovers in Singapore). I went to look at the stamp album display at the local post office. The texts under the postage stamps showed the stories behind each postage stamp.
   If I remember correctly, an Australian safety organisation tracked down the accident records from drowning and were surprised to find that most accidental deaths were not in the sea but in the back garden swimming pools. As a result they brought in regulations that swimming pools (and probably ponds) should be fenced in, gated and locked when unoccupied, to prevent children accidentally falling or, or going swimming unsupervised.
    I presume Australia and New Zealand have similar rules.
Learning To Swim
    As soon as I got pregnant I insisted my husband learned to swim. If I had not already been a swimmer I would have taken swimming lessons. At some time you are likely to be near a pool or beach with your children or others. The complexes with pools should organise swimming and life saving.
  Lifesaving Skills
     Whilst anybody can wade into a paddling pool and pull out a baby, it's not so easy saving an adults in deep water such as the deep end of a swimming pool or in waves in the sea if your feet can't touch the bottom of the pool, - especially if the person in trouble is large and heavy.
   I tried to save my mother, a non-swimmer, who crossed into the deep end of a hotel swimming pool, when I was a teenager. I screamed when she went across the line and sank. I jumped in. She grabbed my neck and we both went under.
   You have to know how to turn somebody around and support them from underneath so they don't drag you under.
   Luckily I had shouted and my father, fully clothed, and another man both jumped in. They both took one arm of my mother and rescued my mother.
   I was left to find my way back to the side. I'd been under water for a few seconds. I nearly choked, coughing and spluttering, gasping, trying to doggie paddle back to the side.
  Schools should be teaching swimming and life saving. I realise that you have to have access to a pool to practise. You cannot learn to dance or swim without actually doing it. But the first half of any lesson is when the teacher tells you and shows you how it is done. The expensive part of the lesson is the demonstration.  The demo shows you what to do. It gives you the confidence to try it out. Afterwards you keep practising by yourself.
   Even showing videos of swimming and life saving would be better than nothing. It would encourage children to speak to their parents, or ask their parents for lessons. The parents might then raise funds for school or out of school lessons, write letters to the organisers, or take their children for lessons.
   It would give them the first half of the lesson, so that they would progress faster. Even a non-swimmer in an accident would at least have the blueprint in their mind and some clue as to how to take action to reach the side of the pool or boat. Whilst in many cases just the video is not enough, even if it made the different to one pupil in 100, or one in a thousand, that would be several lives saved every year.
   What are the readers' comments? Some have the same thought as mine - why is that pool not gated? Another comments on babysitter safety rules. An excellent suggestion - when you are in the bathroom and can't supervise the children, you ask them to stand outside the door and you keep talking to them. While listening to them, you know exactly where they are and what they are doing. You hold their attention and can be sure they have not wandered away but are alive and safe.

Travel Tip
   Think about all the situations you might be in and check out what safety devices you can take when travelling. For example, At home you might keep your toddlers in a playpen at home. You probably can't travel with this by plane. But a foldable one probably can go in a car or caravan.
    What about when walking. Young children when walking with you in busy streets, near cliff tops, rivers, beaches, swimming pools etc, could be attached to you, perhaps by extending reins.
   I would not want to fall asleep with a child on a rein. It could get tangled or strangle itself.
   At home you might consider installing a horse box door or bar door, so you can see under or over the door, whilst still having some privacy.
   What about the talking idea - keep children talking when you are in a bathroom. If the toilet has a gap under the door and you are inside, ask to see their shoes.
   Give them something to do. e.g. ask them to read to you from a book, tell you where they want to go later, or for older children, give them a map and ask them to call out details of attractions or instructions for a computer.