Kids in the swimming pool

Maybe I am missing something here.

I noticed lately at the public pool that almost every kid there is wearing a life jacket. This is a public pool, during the daytime, with lifeguards on duty and parents supervising. Some of these kids in life jackets are as old as 11 or 12.

When did parents start making their kids wear life jackets in a public swimming pool? When I was a kid in the 70s, NOBODY wore a life jacket in the public pool...they would have been laughed at. After all, it was during daylight hours, lifeguards were on duty - who is really going to drown?? We all knew how to swim, tread water, float, and dive.

I think the safety issues with kids have been taken to an unhealthy extreme. These kids will never really learn how to swim or get real exercise. Seems like all they can do is bob around in the water in their life jackets.

And if you think its weird, "you" are the one with the problem, according to the parent. They will tell you how horrible you are for not taking their safety measures seriously enough.

I used to be a lifeguard back in the 80's. At the pool I worked at floatation devices were not allowed in the pool. It was a large pool, but 6 lifeguards were on duty. I don't remember seeing many kids who couldn't swim. We also were able to kick any kid out for the day who was misbehaving. The 2 years I worked there the only emergency I ever had to take care of was a child who cut their foot. Kids now days are such pampered pussies. I haven't been to a public pool in 20 years. Seems like a nightmare!

its all about the lawsuits. everything with the moos is a lawsuit nowadays and the breeder juries that award this stuff with millions to lawyers and moos are to blame.

That's why I keep telling the cf friends of mine, RELISH your jury duty, and participate fully. You alone can stop bullshit like this sitting on a jury, unilaterally. Jury duty is by far more powerful than voting. Thank doG we live in a Constitutional Republic instead of a "Democracy" because the breeders would run us over even worse than they do now. They have the power to overrule the cf in the voting booth by virtue of mob rule, but in the jury box, we alone can make decisions if we so choose to do that. :gun1:gun1:beer

I think it is an obvious public attempt for attention so onlookers will say, "Oh look what good parents they are! They care about their kid's safety and THEIR kid comes first". I feel reasonably sure I am correct, because according to the daily news, these same "wonderful parents" don't seem to give a shit about the same kid's safety at pools which are located in the privacy of their own back yards. Nope, no life jackets on at home!!!! So, why the bulky lifejackets on IN PUBLIC, but not so much as a floating plastic donut or a thought given to simply locking a back door?

All one has to do is get called, and then accepted for jury duty. Good luck with that. I've been a voter for 20 years, and have only received notification twice, and both times I showed up and didn't even get my number called.

Other parents are pretty much in the top ten reasons why I would never have children. I think Sara is a good example, from what I've read, she's raising her child right, like my parents did. Encouraging it (I don't remember the gender) to play outside, having behavioral expectations for it, making it to chores...all the usual child abuse. But when she does this in front of other parents, or expects their children to behave, she's the evil bad one who is destroying her child. My guess is that one or two parents decided to put their kids in life vests at the pool, because they couldn't be bothered to get their kids swimming lessons. A couple other parents thought "good idea" and did the same, and those all got together and badgered/bullied as many other parents as possible to strap on the life vests too, OR bullied the staff at the public pool to require life vests for everyone.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

My parents let us swim without life jackets (I never wore one - ever) and let us ride our bikes around the neighborhood. Yet, we were considered "over protected" by the standards of the 1970s. These days, what they did would be considered "child abuse". They might even get hauled in by CPS for letting us swim without life jackets!

Good lord! I don't think I wore floatation devices past the age of 4 or 5. The daycare I attended in the summer (Oh no, daycare!! child abuse!) took us swimming all the time, and I sort of just learned to swim by hanging out with the other kids. We weren't allowed to go to the deep end without passing a swimming test given by one of the teachers. I also never rode a bike while wearing a helmet. Any playground I went to had tons of high, metal or wooden things to climb upon/swing from and if I got hurt, I usually just got a band-aid and resumed playing. My parents and daycare teachers would probably be arrested for child abuse these days.

Oh, I rode my bike every day in grade school - never wore a helmet. I think you learn to be more careful and develop better skills when you aren't wearing all that safety gear. Yes, I fell a few times, but that's part of the learning process.

I predict within the next 20 years, you will see parents putting their kids in full body armor before allowing them to leave the house.

A life jack in a swimming pool? What utter nonsense! We never wore one as kids, except for boating. We also never wore helmets while bike riding, although wearing a helmet is probably a good idea.

How about kids who are driven to school or take the bus? We always walked to school or rode our bikes. I wonder if kids these days get any kind of exercise!

m4p Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > How about kids who are driven to school or take
> the bus? We always walked to school or rode our
> bikes. I wonder if kids these days get any kind
> of exercise!


Same here. We walked to school. But these days, parents hear stories about kidnappings and "sex predators" and don't understand that these things are not as common as the media blows them up to be. They think everyone is a sexual deviant just waiting to snatch their kid away.

Life jackets in the pool is ridiculous. It also ironically is less safe than teaching the kid to swim properly--though that might take up some of Mommy's Oprah time, doG forbid.

There's even a pretty cool program out there (Infant Swimming Resource) that teaches babies how to roll into a safe floating position if they fall in a pool fully clothed. I'm not fond of babies or kids, but I admire the down-to-earth sensible nature of the program. Kids as young as 4 months old can learn the safe floating technique, and it's designed for fully clothed children. Here's a Youtube demo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xo3mfmeJVQ

Infant Swimming Resource homepage:

http://www.infantswim.com/home.html

One example of good parenting, imho...

I think this thread title would make for an EXCELLENT name of a heavy-metal or punk band.

LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Life in little roseland:

1. no safety gear.

2. tons of fun and great stories about where these scars came from.

3. innate fearlessness.

except, um, anything with more than 4 legs....