ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER


SAFETY: Course teaches toddlers how to survive if they fall in a pool.

When he’s not gasping for air, Jacob Ian Gregg is alternating sobbing and wailing his tiny lungs out. The toddler looks miserable enough to break Daddy’s heart, his tears mixing with pool water at Watersafe in Seal Beach.

Although he doesn’t know it, Jacob, a 1-year-old from Los Alamito, is successfully learning to float on his back – a skill that his parents pray he will never have to use.

Mom Liberty Gregg watches wordlessly behind a window, not wanting to interfere with the learning process. She enrolled Jacob in Watersafe, one of several swim schools in Orange County that offer water-survival lessons for toddlers.

Whether these lessons work in real life- or are even safe- is arguable.
Most people agree that adults must take precautionary measure to keep children from drowning – the No. 1 cause of accidental deaths among children under 5, according to Capt. Scott Brown, spokesman for the Orange County Fire Authority.

Only last week, a 3-year-old girl visiting Orange County from Provo, Utah, drowned in an Anaheim motel pool after she was left unsupervised briefly. That same day, a 1-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy were hospitalized after climbing into a spa at their sitter’s home in Fullerton.

Water-survival lessons are not a substitute for vigilantly watching over a child and for providing adequate barriers between a pool or spa, said Ginny Flahive, who owns and teaches at the Orange and Seal Beach locations of Watersafe.

“I can never guarantee that the kids are drown-proof after they take lessons. But they can be an additional layer of protection.”

Swim-school owners and parents say it’s better for a child to have had that lesson than not so if the toddler should fall or slip into water, he or she just might remember what to do.

But it is unlikely that infants can be made “watersafe,” according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The academy does not recommend lessons for children younger than 4 for two reasons: Parents of these infants may develop a false sense of security if they believe that their infant can swim a few strokes. Young children who are repeatedly immersed in water may swallow so much of it that they can develop water intoxication, which can lead to convulsions, shock, even death.

And a toddler’s learning development does not enable him or her to transfer a lesson to an emergency situation, said Mary Marlin, safety expert at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, which teamed with the Orange County Fire Authority to launch a 1998 child drowning prevention and education campaign.

Despite the doubts of experts regarding Watersafe, parents think it’s money well-invested.
Last April, Martin Howard, 36, of Long Beach was with his 20-month-old son, Michael in the back yard. When Martin turned briefly to scrape the gunk off a pool tile on the shallow end, Michael reached for the water in the deep end with his little plastic shovel.

The baby fell in without a splash.
“Da-da, da-da,” Michael called out calmly.
Howard turned his attention back to Michael and to mixed horror and amazement, saw his son back-floating, shovel still in one tiny hand.

“I never thought this would happen to us,” said Michael’s mom, Cindy Howard, 34. “I’m a registered nurse in the pediatrics department and I’ve seen kids who have drowned. So I’m diligent about making sure our kids are protected from drowning. We have barriers between the pool and our kids and we keep the doors and window locked and secured.”

Early last year, Michele Kiralla, 1, a Watersafe student, followed some older kids into the pool in Las Vegas.

Mom, Julie Kiralla, 38, had momentarily turned to talk to someone. She heard Michele utter a small cry and looked to see the toddler back-floating.

-Lisa Lytle