When a good portion of your day is spent reading about accidents all over the country, you start think it's a terrible idea to ever let your child do, well, anything. (You are also REALLY ANNOYING about seat belts, but that's a subject for another day). I have a 17-month-old daughter, and my sincere hope is to be able to let her feel the sun on her face occasionally, as opposed to my preference, which would be never allowing her to leave a padded enclosure. Reporting on drowning accidents is obviously very discouraging in this regard, but I'm trying to be pro-active. To this end, today I've been searching terms like "baby swim class" and "toddler drowning prevention," and I found a great website, Infant Swimming Resource. The folks at ISR say that you can start swimming lessons at as young as 6 months(!), but these aren't your run-of-the mill baby swimming lessons. ISR swimming lessons are focused entirely on self-rescue and survival, and photos on their website and Facebook page indicate that they're serious.  Look at that baby just lounging in the water! Are you kidding me?! I cannot bear how cute it is/nervous it's making me. She looks totally relaxed! I guarantee her mother is less so!  According to the ISR website, you can expect the following from their Self-Rescue® survival swimming lessons:

ISR’s unique results are achieved through fully customized, safe and effective, one-on-one lessons with only your child and the Instructor in the water. What your child will learn, and the way he or she will learn it, is what makes ISR so different from traditional swimming lessons. Always putting safety first, ISR emphasizes competence, which leads to confidence, and provides the foundation for a lifetime of enjoyment in and around the water. What your child will learn depends on his or her age and developmental readiness, but in all cases, at minimum, your child will learn to roll onto his or her back to float, rest, and breathe, and to maintain this position until help arrives.

Lessons are split up into two age groups, 6-12 months and 1-6 years. They have video examples that literally made me clap with glee while sitting alone in my living room (I am very cool). Since ISR is all about self-rescue, the babies are basically taught to roll onto their backs in a floating position, rest, and breathe. They're also taught to maintain that position until help arrives. I dare you not to exclaim like an idiot while watching this:  Lessons for older kids are expanded to include swimming until they need air, rotating onto their backs to float/breathe/rest, then rolling back over to continue swimming. ISR students are taught to repeat this sequence until they reach safety (e.g., the side of the pool, shoreline, etc.).  ISR also has a "Not one more child drowns" mission, which, if successful, would make my job much less of a bummer. They believe in a multi-faceted approach to swimming safety that I love: 

ISR believes pool fences, supervision, and pool alarms are important parts of a necessary multi-layered approach to drowning prevention. However, traditional lines of defense break down, and the over 4,000 drowning deaths per year bear a grim testament to the fact that traditional approaches are missing a key component: the child. ISR’s core conviction is that the child is the most important part of a drowning prevention strategy and our over 300,000 ISR graduates and 800 documented survival stories are proof that children can save themselves. Children are curious, capable, and have an uncanny ability to overcome obstacles like pool fences; at ISR we take that ability and teach them skills to potentially save themselves if they find themselves in the water alone.

The only drawback that I can see for this program is that it's tough to find an instructor, and while their website has a locator tool, there doesn't seem to be a map that shows where I can find the nearest one (based on taking a stab with the locator, there isn't one within 150 miles of where I live). So, unfortunately, ISR aren't an option for my toddler. Still, I really love their view on drowning prevention, so I'd love to see people spread the word so that this type of training is available for every child. In the meantime, I'll be doing more research for folks like me who live outside of a major metropolis who would like their babies to learn to swim.