injury stories
have been shown to be quite effective to positively impact parents’
perceptions of their own children’s vulnerability for injury
and need for greater supervision (Morrongiello et al., 2009b). Thus,
assimilating these into a parent-focused component of children’s
learn-to-swim programs may produce the desired effect of increasing
parents’ perceptions of children’s drowning risk and their
commitment to proximal and watchful supervision at all times.
Results of a recent systematic review of research on drowning
prevention messages confirms that effective messaging about the
value of supervision can be developed (Moran et al., 2011). Therefore,
expanding children’s learn-to-swim programs to comprise a
parent-directed component that provides both frequent tracking of
the child’s specific swim skills (to improve the accuracy of parents’
judgments of their child’s swimming skills), as well as close-call or
child drowning stories (to increase awareness of children’s drowning
risk and commitment to watchful and proximal supervision),
may greatly enhance the ability of these learn-to-swim programs
to reduce the risk of drowning for children at these young ages.
Further, community wide dissemination of education materials,
within swimming lesson programs, that promotes a more realistic
appraisal of children’s swim ability and that target parents’ perceptions
of the value of close supervision in drowning prevention may
be particularly beneficial.