06-05-2025
May is water safety awareness month
GREENVILLE, N.C. (WNCT)– May is Water Safety Awareness Month and whether you're heading to the beach or just taking a dip in the neighborhood pool, it is important to make sure you're being aware and safe in the water.
'Water is an environment that we don't spend a lot of time in every single day of our lives. So, it's very foreign to a lot of people, and we are in such a water rich area that we have a lot of opportunities to interact with it. So, safety has to be paramount,' Director of Aquaventure in Greenville Mike Godwin.'
'Drowning with children is the number one cause of accidental death for children under the age of 5 and we are so passionate here at Goldfish at turning that statistic around,' Regional Manager of Goldfish Swim School in Greenville South Carolina Tiffany Keyser said.
For all the training that children and adults do in the water, it is crucial for them to learn how to get out safely. For some, swim lessons can start as early as four months old, the same age that babies can start holding their head up on their own.
'Very important for children to understand that they need to learn how to safely climb out of a pool or a body of water if they were to fall in,' Keyser said. 'They need to practice how to efficiently do back floats so that they can breathe oxygen. That's the number one thing that we always want to teach is how to do a really great back float.'
Experts said even if you are a trained swimmer, you need to be aware of what body of water you are swimming in and know your limits.
'We have to understand what our skill limits are. As adults, that's a little bit easier, but for kids, that's on the parents. The parents really have to understand what the limits of their child's swimming ability is,' Godwin said. 'I would say that, if you're taking your child to any kind of swim lesson program, make sure it's an established program that understands what they're doing.'
Local swim lessons are available at Aquaventure in Winterville or for young children, you can check out the Goldfish Swim School with multiple locations across the country and one regional location in Greenville, S.C.
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