Birch McMullin, owner of British Swim School St. Louis, was interviewed on Thursday on National Public Radio\u2019s St. Louis affiliate to talk about drowning prevention and water safety. He was part of a panel on St. Louis on the Air with Don Marsh.<\/p>\n
Drowning deaths still happen \u201cway too often\u201d Birch said, \u201cbut don\u2019t get the same attention that other topics do and, he pointed out, \u201cdrowning is actually the No. 1 cause of accidental death for children 1 to 4 [years old], and that\u2019s above car accidents.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that for very young children, survival skills are key \u2013 particularly learning to flip over and float on their back so that they can breathe, call out and be visible.
\n\u201cMost drownings are not when a toddler sneaks out of the house and manages to get to the pool \u2013 it\u2019s actually where the parents have gone to the pool with the child, and maybe they just run inside to grab a soda or they get distracted on the phone,\u201d he said. \u201cSo they happen most of the time while there is supervision going on.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo if a child can roll over and float and call for help, most of the time a parent is then close enough to respond to that. And it buys them that extra time that can turn what could be a very dangerous situation into just a very scary one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The participants also included Emily Wujcik, Aquatics and Safety Coordinator for SLU and Stephe McCormick founder of Backyard Lifeguards as well as Lisa McMullin, Birch\u2019s mother who lost a child to drowning many years ago and who, along with the other participants wants to increase awareness of the prevalence of drowning and the ways to prevent this most preventable of injuries.<\/p>\n
Listen to the Complete Interview<\/a><\/p>\n British Swim School St. Louis offers premium water survival and swimming lessons for infants, toddlers, children and adults, starting at just 3 months old. We proudly serve the St. Louis communities of Afton, Ballwin, Brentwood, Chesterfield, Clayton, Concord, Crestwood, Creve Coeur, Dardenne Prairie, Eureka, Fenton, High Ridge, Howell Island, Kirkwood, Ladue, Lake St. Louis, Manchester, Maplewood, Maryland Heights, New Town, Olivette, Overland, Richmond Heights, St. Charles, Orchard Farm, St. Paul, St. Peters, Sunset Hills, Town and Country, Valley Park, Webster Groves, Weldon Springs, and Wildwood. Call 314-312-1878 to enroll or\u00a0find a class online<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Birch McMullin, owner of British Swim School St. Louis, was interviewed on Thursday on National Public Radio\u2019s St. Louis affiliate to talk about drowning prevention and water safety. He was part of a panel on St. Louis on the Air with Don Marsh. Drowning deaths still happen \u201cway too often\u201d Birch said, \u201cbut don\u2019t get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-water-safety"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishswimschool.com\/st-louis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishswimschool.com\/st-louis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishswimschool.com\/st-louis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishswimschool.com\/st-louis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishswimschool.com\/st-louis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/britishswimschool.com\/st-louis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishswimschool.com\/st-louis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishswimschool.com\/st-louis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishswimschool.com\/st-louis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishswimschool.com\/st-louis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}