What color is your child’s swimsuit? Does it have good or bad visibility?
A suit with good visibility can save your child’s life when they slip under the water.
The safest suit colors:
Solid neon - Neon pink, neon green, neon lime
Mixed neon in big patterns only
The safest goggle, cap, snorkel, and fin colors:
Solid neon - Neon pink, neon green, neon lime
The worst suit colors:
Avoid water and shadow colors: No blue, green, white, or pale
Avoid small patterns: No small flowers, strips, dots, or cartoons
These are also the worst colors for goggles, caps, snorkels, and fins.
There is a PDF of the slideshow at the bottom of this post.
Adults:
Wear the bright neons! If you have a blood clot and slip under the water with your child, hopefully someone will see you to save you both.
If you want full body coverage, look for neon rash guards and other surfwear for good products. Watch out for “muslim swimsuit” searches because many of those suits are too dark to be safe. You may need to DIY it with separates.
When you pair separates, make sure the top is neon, especially if your bottoms are dark. Consider getting fabric to make your own, too.
Women:
There is no need to fret about how you look in a swimsuit. But if you want to cover up, you can wear a rash guard top with board shorts. In general, surfing and boarding gear provides coverage, utility, and style. Plus, you get pockets with velcro.
Hey, men never have to strip down, they just wear baggy shorts over the chubbyness.
Discussion:
Sorry to sound so grim about this all. I have saved a number of children and a few adults from drowning in both pools and open water. None of them have been my own students because I make sure they can swim!
The last time I was in NYC, I thought to use a public pool for the weekend. As I walked around to view the area, I saw a young Black girl wearing a dark blue swimsuit. She was attending a group swim class in the deep end of the pool. As two lifeguards stood next to the pool (not paying attention) and one instructor floated in the water, the young girl slipped under the water.
No one saw the girl go under the water! If I hadn’t been there, she simply would have drowned. I jumped in, grabbed her, and pulled her to the side before the lifeguards or other adults even realized what was going on. Her mother was shocked because she hadn’t maintained eye contact with her daughter because there were two lifeguards, plus the instructor in the water.
This sort of thing has happened to me many times over the past decades.
THE BIGGEST MYTH ABOUT DROWNING: Drowning children inhale water and sink. They do not yell and thrash because they have no air left in their lungs. Ignore all the movies and shows you have ever seen. Children just sink to the bottom and drown.
Tell your child to stay away from other adults in the water, especially in open water. Because a drowning adult will drown your child in an attempt to stay afloat.
This happened to one of my students (I warn all of them about this). She got caught in a rip tide near the beach. Remembering my warning, she paddled AWAY from shore because there was a group of adults between her and the shore. Sure enough, several of the adults began to thrash around. My student (she was about 9 years old) remembered our field trip practice, so she let herself drift with the riptide until she was able to swim easily to the beach. Her parents (who hadn’t been paying attention) now panicked (too late), thinking she was dead. Everyone was surprised when she finally hiked back up the beach (the riptide carried her far away). I think she was disgusted with all of the adults because she borrowed her mother’s cell phone to call me from the beach to tell me the story.
The adults thrashing around? One of them drowned.
Take your child to the beach to practice swimming out of riptides as soon as they can swim strongly. If you do not swim well enough to do this, enroll your child in junior lifeguard training for the ocean. Several of my students have swum out of riptides because we practiced it during field trips.
If you are reading this blog, you definitely need to swim well. You are younger than you will be tomorrow…
Here is a good Tim Ferriss blog post about learning to swim as an adult. It has recommendations.
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