children on deck at workouts

Tom, A great story and a wonderful example of the fellowship and camaraderie of Masters Swimmers. It puts me in mind of another story of a couple of very active Masters Swimmers. Their son was born on a Wednesday, 3 days before a meet they were helping to run. On Saturday, mom and baby showed up at the meet and dad helped out. The next year the wife started coaching a masters club. She would bring the son along to practice, and similar to Tom’s experience the team sort of adopted him. A couple of years later they had a daughter who also became a regular at practice. A side note; the wife ran practice on Wednesday, gave birth Thursday, missed Friday practice and was back at the pool for Sunday practice; with baby. The club and kids all turned out fine. If we had banned the kids, we never would have had the coach and the club would most likely have floundered.

Originally posted by craiglll@yahoo.com This may sound really harsh. But under no circumstances should there ever be children simply standing around a pool deck. You’re right it does sound harsh. Currently my club works out at a public pool. We get 4 lanes of the 8 lane competition pool, the other 4 lanes are open for public swimming and a second play pool is also open to the general public. At any given time, during our Masters workout, there may be 100 or more kids on the deck and in the other lanes/pool. Might this be a circumstance where children are allowed to simply stand around a pool deck?

This may sound really harsh. But under no circumstances should there ever be children simply standing around a pool deck. It is not the job of hte lifeguard to babysit nor is it the job of the coach. Why not set up an off-site bady sitting area?

In my 25+ years in Masters, the clubs I’ve been associated with have never had policies about bringing children to workouts. However a number of the facilities where we worked out have had policies. And these policies have varied greatly, depending on the facility (public pool, private pool, YMCA, university, etc.) It should be noted that at a USMS workout, children are never allowed in the workout lanes. So you don’t need to write any policy addressing in water issues. Does your workout facility have any rules regarding children? At my current club we swim at a public pool where a number of parents bring their children and send the kids off to the play pool, while we workout.

Well in our case we are renting lanes at a facility that is closed to the public at the times of our workouts. So technically the facility does not allow children on deck at that time, or I suppose it is a gray area. At any rate, it is the pool management who makes the rules, and they suggested enforcing a no-child rule after a few incidents of disagreement between lifeguards and parents regarding what was OK. (I won't bother to give examples.) In hopes of not leaving our swimming parents hamstrung, we wrote a policy that pool management was agreeable to trying for a while before they move forward with disallowing children at the pool. Well, wouldn't you know it, the board went to bat for these people and now they are steaming mad at us. I guess no good deed goes unpunished. Anyway, after all the dust-up I am curious about this situation at other teams. Interestingly I see the discussion on this board evolving similarly to the one happening on our team. Like, at what age is it ok for a child to be alone on the deck? What is considered adequate supervision? Is a parent swimming while their infant is in a stroller on the side of the pool adequate? What about parents who take offense to lifeguards' authority? It's all become so complicated, and everybody wants a waiver for THEIR kid, I've become sorely tempted to return to pool management and request that they go ahead with their ban so we can all get back to swimming.

Originally posted by roseth Like, at what age is it ok for a child to be alone on the deck? What is considered adequate supervision? Is a parent swimming while their infant is in a stroller on the side of the pool adequate? What about parents who take offense to lifeguards' authority? For liability reasons most likely, children under the age of twelve need a parent according to our YMCA rules. If the lifeguard gets any grief doing his job, the director will politely ask the troublesome members to leave. Leaving kids on deck, especially infants in strollers sounds like a bad idea. An attorney's dream case if that baby ever wound up in the water, no matter how well intentioned the set up is. Liability would fall directly on the facility for creating the recipe of a potential drowning. It sounds like the kids need to have some supervised group fun.

In case I have a pool under my responsability I would have a policy anounced in a big sign at the entrance of the pool to be like: "No children are allowed at the deck unattended, lap swimming people would not be considered as being able to supervice any children wile practicing". It would be the coach decition if he(she) wants to take care of a kid wile its parent swim, as Tom's history case, I guess that in the case of an infant in its chair, it would not be a serious problem, as the only thing that the infant can do is to cry and in that case, the coach can just tell the parent.

This sounds like a judgement call for the aquatics department, which could takes the onus off of you as the team president. Our facility (a YMCA) prohibits any children on deck without adult supervision. There is a big sign saying so as you enter the pool area. The lifeguards are not baby sitters, and their eyes and attention should be focused on the pool, not the deck. Our workouts are at 6am which pretty much rules out any kids being present at that time. You must have pm workouts, because I don't know of any kids who get up at that hour unless they're swimming fools themselves.:)

For years in Texas I swam with a single parent. Every morning at 5:30 AM she would bring her young son to practice sleeping in her arms, then put him in a lounge chair on the side of the pool in his blanket, then she would swim. It was never an issue or problem and the team loved them both. Many mornings he would go swimming with us during cool down and everyone kept a close eye on him. He loved to daydream in the hot showers after practice, which make his Mom late for work, so I took on the responsibility of keeping him on track/time. Never did anyone on the team feel as though the kid was a problem in any way. Had the team not chipped in and welcomed this little boy, his mother would not have been able to swim.

This example is more related to running than swimming but it might be helpful: I ran for a while with a club that had a rotating/cooperative babysitting service for members who wanted to bring children to workouts. Those who wanted to benefit from this service took a turn at babysitting--which maybe would be once every five or six weeks, so they'd miss that one practice but otherwise could know that their child was being supervised by someone they knew. I wasn't directly involved b/c I don't have children, but it seemed to work pretty well.