Scenic Sunday/Save the World: Save the children from drowning

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The photo shows the Nanyang Technological University's oval, and on the right the swimming pool. It was here, I trained for my 10 km Marathon running. My friend L. trained with me at 6 am in the morning, we added 800 metres per day. Later, we did our circuit of running round the university campus. The day, we completed our 10 km, we High 5ed.

This university in Singapore was part of my life for 16 years. The pool was an appealing place in the tropical island. Kids and parents flock to the pool. Sometimes without care givers. We knew it was a disaster waiting to happen. There were rules in the pool, but not everyone obeys.

This email came today:

Dear parents from small children,

this afternoon at around 5.45pm an approximately 3 year old boy almost drowned in the kid’s pool in the midst of dozens of other kids and parents hadn’t he been rescued by a brave and attentive young man. Actually the guy who saved the boy seemed to be a student who was just talking to a friend next to the pool.

We parents who only realized this event when the rescuer jumped into the water with his clothes on (cell phone and wallet probably inside his pockets) to save the boy, were totally shocked especially as we could have never imagined that something like this could happen at a time where the pool was full of people.

Please, for the safety and life of our children:
notice that even though our child can safely stand up by him-/herself in case he/she falls inside the pool, there are moments where the child apparently can loose orientation and is not able to stand up!
instruct your maid or whoever accompanies your child to the pool to PERMANENTLY watch the child especially when nobody is with him/her inside the pool. I noticed that this boy today nicely played by himself for a long time and we would have never expected that out of a sudden he would loose his orientation and couldn’t stand up by himself alone. When that event happened the maid apparently wasn’t watching him and the pool was filled with ‘noise’, so most people probably thought the boy is just playing. I myself realized that one gets easily distracted on such a day by for instance talking to other parents and the same case could have happened to all of us and could have lead to a fatal accident.

Thanks again to the great savior who has prevented a tragedy!

Robert

Thanks for a good reminding. My four year old boy had a cramp on his foot after a long swimming and play this afternoon. We just need to watch the kids all the time when they are near water, and need to remind helpers accordingly.

In New Zealand we have Mark teaching children to swim at Trikids.