The only thing worse than a child’s death is a preventable child’s death.
Drowning falls under that heading, and unfortunately it is the leading cause of preventable death in ages 1-4, and the second-leading case in ages 5-12.
In Florida and our area, the problem is heightened because of all of the available places for a tragedy — swimming pools in every neighborhood and hundreds of local lakes.
“It takes a blink of an eye for a parent’s life to change forever,” said Rebecca Bond Abele, the co-founder and lead instructor for Safety First Pediaquatics in St. Cloud. She and her team give up to 600 swim lessons per week to children, trying to make a difference in the community.
She was raised and has lived around the water — she was water skiing at age 3 — so coaching children in the water has been a passion.
According to statistics received from the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, the agency has responded to 215 drowning calls from 2020 through the first quarter of 2023, with 35 deaths that Bond feels didn’t need to happen. Those numbers peaked in 2021 (97 calls, 14 deaths). Spread out as an average, Bond noted the department responds to three drowning calls per week.
“The water is an amazing part of life, but it can also be very dangerous,” she said. “The death numbers don’t take into account the thousands of kids who end up in an ICU or with permanent damage.”
That’s why the work her company and its instructors do is so vital in teaching children, particularly those who live in Central Florida, to swim. Teaching them is part of Safety First Pediaquatics’ mission to eradicate child drownings from our community.
“Nobody is drownproof. It’s something that saves thousands of lives per year,” she said.
While it’s possible, Bond said, to start a child’s swimming lessons at six months, around 8-10 months is a good sweet spot; when they’re mobile, they can slip out of a door and to a pool deck.
“At that point their motor skills are developed,” she said. “When they’re sitting up, and crawling across the room, that’s a good time to start.”
For children with special needs, like autism and Down syndrome, it’s even more imperative to teach them to swim. Bond said a child on the autism spectrum is 160 times more likely to suffer a drowning episode.
In order to spread the word about drowning awareness, and to raise funds for scholarships for families who cannot afford swim lessons for their children, Safety First will hold its first Drowning Awareness 5K run at the St. Cloud Lakefront on Saturday, May 13 at 8 a.m. — come run with Marley the Manatee for water safety!
For information, to become a sponsor or to register, go to bit.ly/2023sfpal5k.
