Preventing childhood drownings: Program teaches infants to float even before they can walk

In a residential pool in Coral Gables, we found a group of babies, as young as 6 months old, learning to turn around, float and lift their heads out of the water to breathe in case they fall into a pool. Older kids also learn to swim to the edge after they find their bearings.

It’s all part of an infant swimming resource lesson known as ISR.

“We teach kids how to self-rescue, not just swim,” said Elisa Hernandez-Montero, an ISR instructor, and owner of www.somiisr.com.

The program runs five days a week. Each class is only 10 minutes long because children learn faster and retain skills best when taught frequently and in short intervals. It’s a commitment nurse practitioner Paola Hoover made when her daughter was six months old.

“We took a little break and then we learned of an unfortunate incident of someone close to us that had a drowning, and then that's when we got back into it. We're like, we have to start again,” she said.

Last year, 99 children drowned in Florida. The state leads the nation in child drowning deaths. So far this year, 53 children have already drowned, including an 8-year-old who recently made his way into a neighbor’s Fort Lauderdale pool and a 1-year-old who drowned in his backyard pool in Margate in April.

The alarming numbers don’t include non-fatal drownings like a young girl who was recently rescued from a South Florida pool and managed to walk away unhurt. Sadly, Mason Brown wasn’t that fortunate. He was a year old when he fell in his North Miami pool July 2017 and his life changed forever. 

“Mason got out three doors. One was the sliding door and we found him in the water. So severely brain injured ever since,” said Randy Brown, Mason’s dad.

Hoping to keep other children and families from going through the same pain, Brown became an ISR instructor in North Miami. 

“You don't realize if you put your son or daughter in a car seat, you should be putting them in training to swim. So much water around us here in South Florida, anywhere in Florida,” Brown said.

Allison Hult, an ISR instructor from Boca, said it’s also important for parents to know CPR in case they come across an unresponsive child in a pool. 

“A child under 30 pounds can drown in under 30 seconds. So every, every second counts,” Hult said.

Florida law requires all pools to have barriers, yet statistics show an increase in child drownings. 

“We're very big on teaching our parents layers of protection, fencing the pool, alarms on the doors, there's alarms that can go in the pool, there's cameras that monitor the zone and lets you know if there's anybody in the water," Hernandez-Montero said. "We want ISR and self-rescue to be the last layer of protection."

It’s important to stress that these classes do not replace adult supervision. That needs to be in place whenever children are near the water. If you want to know more about ISR and find a local instructor, visit this link. 

ISR instructors tell us they offer scholarships for those families that can’t afford the program. Here’s a list of other free and low-cost swim lessons in our area.

• YMCA South Florida - Swim for Jenny
• YMCA South Florida - swim lessons
• Miami-Dade County swimming lessons
• Diversity in Aquatics (DIA) Swim Club
• Let Us Swim
• City of Miami Aquatics Programs
• Water Smart Broward - swim lessons
• Pembroke Pines Aquatics
• City of Fort Lauderdale - swim lessons
• City of Hollywood - swim lessons
• Palm Beach County Drowning Prevention Coalition
• Boyton Beach resources
• Wasau & Marathon County - swim lessons
• The College of the Florida Keys Pool & Recreation