Swimming Safety Tips For Parents
May 27 -- Last spring, actress Tracey Gold's toddler was out of an adult's sight for less than five minutes — enough time for the little boy to nearly die in a swimming pool.
Tracey's mother, Bonnie, was baby-sitting Tracey's two small children, Bailey, 2, and Sage, 4. She noticed that the younger child was missing, and asked where he went. Sage responded, 'Mema, Bailey's in the pool. Something's wrong.'" The grandmother raced to the pool.
"Bailey was in the pool. He was sunny side up. He was under the water, and there was no sign of life. I said to him, 'Bailey, Bailey, Bailey.'" Bonnie Gold told ABCNEWS' consumer correspondent Greg Hunter. "No response. I checked for pulse. There was no pulse, there was no breathing. So I just immediately went into CPR."
The CPR that she had learned some 30 years ago came back to her, and after two puffs of air, the water spilled out of her grandson's lungs. Bailey started screaming, as color came back into his face. After the scare, he was just fine. Bu Gold's son Bailey fits the classic pool accident profile, a child between the ages of one and three years old, out of sight for less than five minutes.
Terrible Twos Are Dangerous, Too
On average, a child under the age of five drowns in a home swimming pool every day. And every day, about seven children are treated at emergency rooms for near-drownings. According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, most children drown in residential swimming pools and drowning is the second leading cause of injury-related death for children, ages 1 to 14.
"When you're two, you're just into everything," said Tracey Gold, who starred in Growing Pains. "And that's a 2-year-old's job, is to explore, and it's our job to protect them from that."
The key to water safety for children is that they should always be under adult supervision, Gold said. She also advised that parents get a self-latching fence around the pool that is at least four feet high. (At the grandmother's house, they had just moved in and there was no fence around the pool, yet.)
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