Stacy Duncan
Dear Judy,
Our family regularly vacations at a house on a lake and my fearless 2 year- old son knows that he must wear a life jacket at all times while outside. Despite my efforts to downplay the water feature and to ensure that he abide by the life jacket rule, my worst fears were nearly realized this past summer. While under the watchful eye of four adults, my son Matt managed to sneak out of the house and run down to play by the water with no life jacket.
By the grace of a much higher power, there were two women on an adjacent pier: one was able to keep an eye on him while the other came to alert us. Fortunately, we found Matt quickly and he was fine, but the story could have ended so much differently and so much more tragically, as it does for many families every summer.
Afterwards I was physically sick and couldn’t even talk about the incident. I knew I had to do better, I knew that I could not ignore what had happened, and the best defense is a good offense!
Upon our return to Colorado I began to look for a survival swim class (that I wasn’t even sure existed) for Matt. It didn’t take long before I had you on the phone and you were saying to me “If you’re looking for someone to teach your toddler to splash around and blow bubbles in the water, that’s not what we do”. I said, “No ma’am, I’m looking for water survival skills for my son”. I could hardly believe your confidence as you described the program; after all, we were talking about teaching a very defiant 2 year-old boy to swim! This conversation took place on a Thursday, and the next morning I was at the pool observing an 18 month old floating on his back in a full snowsuit. My eyes immediately teared up with relief that we had found IAS and an answer that someday might actually save Matt’s life. We enrolled that day and started private lessons with Kyla the next week.
The first couple days of lessons were hard to watch, but before I knew it, in that first week, Matt was doing the “Swim”. Not far behind was the “Swim-Float”, then almost as if by a miracle in the third week, the “Swim-Float-Swim”! I was totally astonished by how effective and efficient the techniques were that Kyla used; I’ve never seen anything like it (this coming from an ex-Red Cross WSI). Since then Matt’s comfort level and safety instincts in the water have continued to improve FAR beyond my expectations and we have not looked back or missed a lesson or Fun Friday. My ONLY regret is that I waited for a near-accident to prompt me to search out IAS- I should have gotten my son involved long before!
We are eternally grateful to you, Kyla and Infant Aquatics for your many years of dedication to teaching kids to swim so that you could help our son learn to “Swim-Float-Swim” when we needed you the most. Now that we have a “good offense” I realize that these lessons have been so much more than that. You’ve given him a skill that he can build on and have fun with for the rest of his life! My hope is that his new skills will never be put to a real survival test; however IAS has given our whole family a tremendous gift in the life-saving skills you have taught him. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!
