ISR- Self Rescue Swim Lessons

This post is a little more personal than usual, but it’s about something that I think is really important to share. My son, Henry, recently finished his ISR training. ISR stands for Infant Swimming Resource and their mission is, “Not One More Child Drowns.” The leading cause of accidental death for children under the age of 4 in the USA is drowning and ISR believes that with caring and capable professionals, lives can be saved! To date, they have delivered more than 8,000,000 ISR lessons and saved more than 800 lives (from ISR website).

ISR training takes place Monday-Friday for 4-6 weeks, depending on your child. It’s definitely a commitment, but to us, it was so worth it. My mom has a pool and the deep end is 10ft. If Henry were to fall in, I can’t guarantee that I or anyone else would be able to get him before it’s too late, and that’s if we even found him right away. To me, the time and money is worth it for Henry to have the tools to save his own life!

ISR lessons are completely customizable to your child. That’s part of what makes these lessons so great, as every kid doesn’t learn the same. ISR teaches children from 6 months of age to 6 years, but I’ve also seen some instructors who are teaching adults how to float as well! At a minimum, ISR teaches your child to roll over if they’re face down, breathe, and float until help arrives.

Obviously, supervision is the number one way to prevent your child from getting in the water alone, but accidents do happen. Everyone always thinks that it won’t happen to them until it does. Prevention is the number one factor in keeping your child from drowning.

Our ISR instructor was Tracy Wheeler and she is so great! Henry is in the stranger danger phase and cried through all his lessons, but Tracy was so patient with him and that was really important to me. She also comforted him while still making sure that he was learning what he needs to. Henry can now successfully flip himself if he were to fall face first and float until help arrives.

ISR does have your child practice in their summer and winter clothes in case they were to fall in in their regular clothes.

It’s been such a great experience and I recommend it to anyone with little kids. We will definitely be going back next year so Henry can learn how to swim instead of just float. There’s so much information that I didn’t include, but I recommend checking out ISR for yourself. These lessons could save your child’s life!

We celebrated his last day with a cookie! :)