Infant Survival Swimming

A while back, I blogged about The Judah Brown Project. 
Listening to Judah’s mom educate about infant survival swimming has gotten me thinking about it quite a bit. As a mom and someone who worked with kids before motherhood, everything about ISR seems counterintuitive to what I was taught. As a young person working in a daycare, the extent of any water play we were ever allowed to do was running through a sprinkler. We were taught that a child can drown in an inch of water.  And they can!

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that many times the things I was taught as a young person were wrong. Floatation devices give kids a false sense of security in the water.  We were taught that they are absolutely necessary, though!  It’s weird to think of something that we were taught was so necessary and life saving could actually give a child a false sense of security and therefore lead to their death. This is what happened to Judah Brown. 

ISR is not without controversy.  I’ve heard some people say that it’s traumatic to a baby to do this to them, and I’ve heard people say they’d rather their child be uncomfortable for a few moments if it meant teaching them a life saving skill. 
I asked the following question on Facebook.  No one responded for several hours, until I received this comment from Naomi Aldort. I had no idea I was facebook friends with her, but I guess I am. Naomi is an author and an educator on positive parenting. Lord knows I am huge on positive parenting!  I did it with my daughter and fought constantly to be more positive and gentle with children I cared for in workplace settings. So when this comment came up from her, I immediately deleted the post. I felt like she was saying that if I advocated for ISR, I couldn’t also be a positive parent. A lot of educators in the positive parenting online community come across this way. I didn’t really have the heart or the willpower to explain that there’s a difference between teaching a child a skill that could save their lives and traumatizing them for an arbitrary reason. 

Naomi’s material is still a great resource for parenting in general. However, if you would like a refresher on breathing in utero versus after your birth, this explains it. 


 A great video on ISR is this one.  The instructor is always right there with the baby. She does a great job explaining trauma, too. It will never not be hard on my anxiety to watch a baby floating in the water like that without wanting to grab it!  That being said, if I ever had another baby, would I enrolled them in ISR?  I’m too old for more kids, but yes I would.  I also hope that my future grandchildren get it too.  

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