Water safety
15 articles
Water Safety for Babies and Young Children: Preventing Drowning at Every Age
Water is one of the most serious safety risks for young children, and the danger is disproportionately concentrated in familiar, domestic settings --...
Safe Water Play Ideas for Babies and Toddlers
Water draws young children with an almost magnetic pull. Given access to a bowl of water and some containers, most toddlers will be absorbed for an ex...
Water Safety for Children Under Three
Water safety for very young children requires a comprehensive approach that goes beyond simple rules or swimming lessons. Children under three are dev...
Water Safety for Babies and Toddlers
Water safety is critical for young children. Drowning can happen quickly and silently, often without the dramatic signs parents expect. Understanding...
Buckets, Basins and Containers: Why They Get Children Killed, and the One-Rule Fix
Bucket drownings are the kind of paediatric tragedy that makes parents cry when they read about it, because the prevention is so trivially simple. A n...
Why a Few Centimetres of Water Is a Drowning Hazard
The thing parents underestimate most about child drowning is how little water it takes. The mental picture of drowning is a swimming pool, the sea, a...
Drowning in 2 cm of Water: How It Happens, and Why Supervision Wins
"How can a toddler drown in two centimetres of water?" is the question almost every parent asks, and the honest answer is: easily, silently, and faste...
Pool Safety: The Layers That Actually Stop a Child Drowning
The reason pools kill children is not that anyone was being reckless. It's that a child slipped through a gap in supervision that everyone assumed som...
Why a Child Should Never Be Left Alone Near Water
Drowning is one of the leading causes of unintentional death among young children, and it can happen faster than many parents realize. A child can dro...
Why Inflatable Swim Devices Do Not Guarantee Safety
Many parents believe that inflatable swim devices, water wings, flotation rings, or swim vests will keep their children safe in water. However, these...
Beach Days With Babies and Toddlers: What to Plan For, What to Pack, What to Watch
A beach day with a small child is not the same activity as a beach day without one. The water is different — surf, currents, drop-offs at the shorelin...
Why the Bathroom Is the Most Dangerous Room in the House
A typical family bathroom is about 4–6 square metres. In that space you have water deep enough to drown in, taps hot enough to burn through young skin...
Bath Safety: How Drowning Actually Happens at Home — and How to Prevent It
The bath is the place where most under-threes drown. Not the swimming pool, not the river — the bath, at home, with a parent in the next room. The rea...
Swimming Lessons for Young Children
Of all the classes you can sign your young child up for, swim lessons are the one with the clearest case behind them. Drowning is the leading cause of...
Keeping Your Child Safe: A Complete Home and Outdoor Safety Guide
A child needs to fall over to learn how not to fall, and a parent who tries to stop every bump ends up exhausted and produces a less coordinated child...