Most children dream of having their own swimming pool. Parents often do too. However, swimming pools can be extremely dangerous. While fortunately not common, children could potentially fall into the swimming pool and get into difficulty, potentially drowning.
If you yourself have children and want to build a pool in your backyard, this is something you need to think about and protect against. You can protect your family by erecting a fence and teaching your children the importance of poolside safety. This post will elaborate upon this and explain how you can protect your kids from accidents.
Building A Fence
One of the most effective ways of protecting your kids is to build a fence around your swimming pool. The process of building a fence is a relatively simple one. You can buy a pool fence mesh with a border to set up around it. If you are going to erect a fence yourself, make sure you follow the instructions given that come with the fence. If you do not follow them to the letter, the fence could be unstable and ineffective. If your children are able to push it over or if it falls in high winds, it’s useless. Some companies will build fences for you if you ask them to in an email after purchasing the relevant parts from them. Many pool companies also offer fence construction services, ensuring their clients’ pools are safe enough for their children to play around.
If you are going to pay a company to build a fence around your pool for you, make sure that you hire one with good reviews and a solid reputation. A company’s reputation can be ascertained from its reviews. An abundance of negative reviews can suggest that a company is not worth working with. In addition to reading their online reviews, you may also want to ask other people in your area with swimming pools for the names of the companies that they worked with to build their pools’ fences. Referrals can also be a good way to save money as you can sometimes get referral discounts.
Teaching Your Children
If you are going to build a pool, you need to teach your children the importance of poolside safety. Allowing your children to run wild around a swimming pool without instructing them on the basics of keeping safe around water can lead to accidents. Accidents involving children and swimming pools rarely end pleasantly. Even a minor slip and fall can lead to a child drowning. The best way to teach them is to take them to the pool and talk them through all of the various hazards that exist in and around it.
Alternatively, you can take them to a public swimming pool and ask one of the lifeguards or instructors there to talk your child through pool safety. Usually, this is not free. While it can be expensive, it is one of the best ways to ensure that your children stay safe. Make sure that you find the most qualified and experienced poolside safety instructor that you can. A good way to find out whether or not an instructor is worth hiring is to read their reviews, for reasons mentioned in the previous section. Do not hire an instructor with no reviews or with bad ones.
Following Your Own Rules
If you tell your children not to run beside the swimming pool, then the first thing you do when your pool’s built is run by the pool and dive into the water, they are not going to take your rules seriously. You therefore need to follow your own rules and show them what poolside safety looks like yourself. You are an adult and therefore can break the rules sometimes, however, do not break them in front of your children. Breaking them can make you look like a hypocrite and is not good for your relationship with them or their relationship with your swimming pool.
If you yourself have no clue about pool safety, consider taking a course or watching instructional online videos. There are lots of instructional online videos for you to watch if this interests you. If you’re going to watch them, try to find ones relevant to home swimming pools and the materials used. As an added note, if you want to keep your pool safe, consider investing in something other than tiled flooring around your pool. Tiled flooring can get very slippery and is the most dangerous type of poolside flooring there is.
My Final Thoughts
I believe that protecting your children from poolside accidents is your duty as a parent. Make sure you follow the guidance given here if you are going to try and keep them safe. Do not make the mistake of not following your own rules either, as this could lead to your children intentionally disobeying you.
Author: Matthew Chiappini
