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How to make pools safe for young swimmers

As the San Diego summer kicks off, you're probably considering ways to remodel your pool. Maintaining or remodeling to provide a safe swimming environment is top priority for parents with children who are old enough to swim.Thankfully, there are some easy ways to renovate a pool to make it more kid-friendly, allowing you to engage in fun and constructive activities with your children in the water.

Instruct your young ones in the basics of swimming
According to Aquatic International, it's never to early to start teaching your child how to swim. The source noted that many have been calling for safety lessons for children as young as six months. These initiatives are being taken in the hopes that children will gain early experience in the water that will translate into beneficial results.

According to AZFamily.com, the rationale for training children to swim so young is the lives saved over the years. The source cited the numerous children who have saved themselves by knowing what to do when in the water and a problem arises. The group Infant Swimming Resource has pioneered many of these training initiatives through a program called "Self Rescue."

"ISR's core conviction is that the child is the most important part of a drowning prevention strategy and our over 260,000 ISR graduates and 800 documented survival stories are proof that children can save themselves," ISR president and CEO JoAnn Barnett said, according to AZFamily.com.

Essential safety measures to implement
You want to make sure that you take some precautionary measure before training your child. A good way to do this is to make renovations that center around swimming lessons. For example, the source noted that the training involved an interval of swimming, followed by floating until the child reaches the edge of the pool. To assist the child, consider purchasing some inflatable devices that can be placed in the pool to help guide the child to the edge. By doing this, you ease your child into the water, providing a nice gradual process of learning.

Of course, you will have to be present at all times to make sure that nothing goes awry in the water. Another key idea for pool remodeling is to have a fence around the pool area that clearly separates the places where children are liable to fall in the pool.  

According to ISR, there are other ways to secure a safe pool space. The fence should be about three to five feet from the water. You don't want your child to climb over the fence and fall into the water, so having a buffer zone is essential. This can also keep insects and other animals from entering your pool.

Another key way to make sure that your children are protected from accidents is to set alarms on all the doors and gates to ensure that you will be alerted immediately if your child wanders into the pool area. Keeping these locked when the pool is not being used will also be helpful. The number of protections you include in your remodeling process will be a good way to tell if your pool is safe. 

"Nothing is foolproof when it comes to protecting children from drowning in a pool.That's why we recommend that pool owners provide layers of protection," said Mark Ross, a spokesman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), according to WebMD. 

Visiting your local San Diego pool service can help find devices and remodeling ideas that will promote safety and health in the pool this summer.