Swim with Sonya Brondel

Email me [email protected]

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It’s cold…..BUT do not wait until it gets warm to book your spot and prepare your child to be safe this summer with the safest and most effective survival swimming lessons available.

2025 ISR Schedules are filling fast at our many ISR Austin Swims locations!

Check out our schedule at www.austinswims.com to see our full list of times available to claim your lesson today!

Give your child the competence, confidence and skills of aquatic safety with Infant Swimming Resource's Self-Rescue program Infant Swimming Resource, Self-Rescue instruction for infants and young children.

2025 Registration is open for everyone! Email me at [email protected] for information and the sign up link.
www.AustinSwims.com

Our youngest ISR students spend their lessons focused on learning to roll to their backs and float 👶Contrary to popular belief this is not a natural instinct for babies! Certified ISR Instructors are extensively trained to safely and oh-so-gently teach your baby this essential skill. It’s science, but it never stops looking and feeling like magic ✨ Visit www.infantswim.com to find lessons near you! 💦

When we learn that we are to become parents, our mission is to keep our children safe. We research car seats, safe toys, food, baby monitors, etc. Where is water safety in that mix? Water is more likely to harm your child than any other cause under age 5. It does not matter if you live on the coast or in the middle of the country. Every family needs a water safety plan.

Parents must utilize our resources to include water in our safety strategies and push medical professionals to talk about water safety at our children’s well visits. It could make all the difference for your family.

Check out my Water Safety Tips for Families list at seastarisr.com/water-safety.

Some other resources to check out:
Safe Kids Worldwide
Infant Swimming Resource
American Red Cross
U.S. Coast Guard
American Academy of Pediatrics
Healthy Children
CAST Water Safety Foundation

Do you have a solid plan for water safety? Have you researched what is safe and isn't?

When we learn that we are to become parents, our mission is to keep our children safe. We research car seats, safe toys, food, baby monitors, etc. Where is water safety in that mix? Water is more likely to harm your child than any other cause under age 5. It does not matter if you live on the coast or in the middle of the country. Every family needs a water safety plan.

Parents must utilize our resources to include water in our safety strategies and push medical professionals to talk about water safety at our children’s well visits. It could make all the difference for your family.

Check out my Water Safety Tips for Families list at seastarisr.com/water-safety.

Some other resources to check out:
Safe Kids Worldwide
Infant Swimming Resource
American Red Cross
U.S. Coast Guard
American Academy of Pediatrics
Healthy Children
CAST Water Safety Foundation

Please read. Education is so very important. 💕

Everytime we post about Judah’s story it brings to light yet again the common resistance responses we get every single time we post about the dangers of using flotation devices on a constant basis with young kids while playing in pools.

These responses are so very common that we have created the following answers to help you when you inevitably face them too.

Changing firmly established culture is THE hardest work. You have to live with personal attacks and vicious, painful comments about the very worst day of your life.

But this is the work that saves lives. I won’t let defensive comments and attacks stop me from doing it. If anything, they just make me more determined to push for change.

That being said, here are the comments and our responses:

Comment: You cannot blame the device or the company. These are just a flotation device. They are not meant to take the place of a parent.

A: I think, when all the evidence (hundreds of testimonies and even surveillance video footage) is pointing to devices causing unintended, dangerous things to be learned by the child while the parent is completely unaware of what the devices are teaching their child and therefore can’t mitigate against it, I actually can and do blame the device.

Comment: My child/children used these devices and they are just fine. I didn’t have any problems. Just because you did doesn’t make the device bad.

A: This is the DEFINITION of survivors bias. Other examples are people who drove drunk and didn't kill anyone or themselves, or people who survived a car crash without a seat belt. It doesn't make it safe. They're just lucky. You are very lucky that it didn’t happen to you. Just because it didn’t happen to you doesn’t mean that it’s not a problem.

Comment: You are just trying to blame something other than your failure to watch your child. You can’t handle the guilt that you failed so you have to blame the device.

A: I think, when all the evidence is pointing to devices causing unintended, dangerous things to be learned by the child while the parent is completely unaware of what the devices are teaching their child and therefore can’t mitigate against it, I actually can and do blame the device.

Furthermore, there is something called Inattention blindness. It’s a concept in neurology that every human has and is susceptible to. It is what we know of commonly as lapses in supervision. Tiny pockets of time when your mind is distracted by other stimuli so you don’t see something else happening, even if it happens right in front of you.

Examples of this are when you find your child with your makeup or marker all over their face or the wall, you find them in the pantry with all of the shelves of food on the ground, etc. It happens to every parent, even when they are in the same room as their child. No one is immune to this. This does NOT mean they weren’t watching their child. This does NOT mean they just sent their child off to find trouble and ignored them. This means that there are gaps in EVERYONE’S ability to supervise. This is why supervision alone is not enough to prevent drowning.

The only difference between a funny photo of your child with toothpaste all over them and a funeral is the presence of water.

The vast majority of all drowning accidents that were investigated were NOT a result of a problem with neglect. I know you want to blame the parent because it makes it less scary for you. If it is a bad parent, you don’t have to think that it could happen to your child. But it isn’t because of bad parenting the majority of the time…and that means it CAN happen to you.

Comment: Is this different from a regular life jacket? And what about floaties? Can we use any of them instead?

A: Yes it is different. It’s not as solid as a regular life jacket. It’s not as good for your child in any kind of water. It will put your kids face down in choppy water where as good life jackets will pull them face up.

Floaties are toys and are not lifesaving devices.

That being said, life jackets and floaties will also teach your child that false sense of confidence, if used during swim time and in pools consistently. Life jackets should only be used when you go to rivers, lakes and oceans. Everyone, adults included, should use them there.

They should NOT be used in pools with a few exceptions: a child with special needs who cannot safely or physically learn to swim or at a crowded, uncontrolled camp or a water park situation, where the water can be unpredictable.

Apart from a few exceptions, the frequent use of ANY flotation device in a controlled water setting, like a pool (where kids should be learning what their own bodies can and can’t do in water) is how they learn that false sense of safety and the vertical positioning in the water.

Don’t use any flotation device in pools on a regular basis. Have one-on-one touch supervision with non-swimmers instead.

Again, exceptions include if your child has special needs that make it impossible for them to learn to swim (if that is the case, they also likely won’t be able to get themselves in the water without you), in a kids camp/school outing setting where there are just not enough adults to watch the children properly or at a water park where the water is uncontrolled.

If that means you can’t go to the pool because there is one adult to 3 kids who can’t swim, then take them to a splash pad or use sprinklers instead. Plan a one on one date for pool time with each child, or find enough adults to have that one to one ratio with each non-swimmer.

Is this harder to do? Yep. But harder to do is nothing when you compare it to losing your child forever.

I’m glad you asked!!

Comment:

The false confidence and the jacket making your kid think anything doesn’t make sense. I constantly tell my kids they can swim without their floats because that’s what we are supposed to do. Also learn to swim means it can assist in helping your child in the water it doesn’t imply that it replaces swim classes or actually teaches your child to swim?
We have used these as well as others and honestly they all suck for toddlers. I would never trust my kid alone in any sort of pool if they haven’t been swimming well on their own for years. Drowning is one of the leading causes of death in kids and it’s not because they are correctly in a life jacket and just drown. It’s usually because someone wasn’t paying attention.

Not saying that was the case here and I understand with death you feel the need to blame someone other than yourself because it’s your child and you’re going to blame yourself regardless but unless there was something wrong with the jacket and it didn’t keep the kid up and the kid somehow drowned with an adult in the pool then okay sure that would make sense but this just does not.

A: It’s not what happens when they are wearing the life jacket. It’s what happens after they take it off, because they have been constantly wearing it. It’s what happens when they go back to the water without the flotation device on, jump or fall in (most go back in intentionally) and don’t have any skills to save themselves. They thought they could swim, due to being able to float while wearing the life jacket, which is what gives them the confidence to go in without it.

Most who survived, when asked why they did go in without it, said they thought they could swim. They didn’t understand the device was what was keeping them floating. They literally thought it was their own ability doing that. Some even hid their device before running back to get into the water.

So many of us are trying to educate you so that you can protect your children from their number one killer. Why would you teach your children to have fun in the water with a false sense of security before you would teach them how to survive in it? I understand if you have questions, but please have some curiosity on why this is dangerous instead of criticism. It blows my mind that you are arguing with people who have suffered the ultimate sacrifice for believing exactly what you believe now, then learning they were wrong in believing it and then trying to help others see that mistaken belief so that this tragedy doesn’t happen to them too.

Just open your mind a bit and educate yourself. That's all we are trying to do. Don't make our mission, (trying to save you from the unimaginable-the actual ONLY thing that gives us purpose in this life) so much more difficult because of your reluctance to hear us.

We aren’t trying to blame anyone or tell them they are bad parents. We all thought the same things before our accidents happened. Now that we know better, we want to help others learn before they have to bury their children too.

Why should you wear bright swimsuits? Because when every second counts, you want to be able to quickly identify a struggling swimmer. Which child do you think would be seen easiest in an emergency situation? The one in the green @lifebriteactive suit? Or the one in the blue? 🤔

The difference between ISR and traditional lessons 🏊🏻‍♀️