She started all three of her children in swimming lessons at the age of 1, including 4-year-old Peter, whom she was watching as he took a class at the Ellicott City Y's pool the other day. Peter and the four other little boys in the water with him could each swim a lap of the pool without flotation devices or much help from their instructor, Megan Lehane. In the class being taught in the next lane, a group of older kids were clearly less skilled in the water.
"The longer you wait," Banyas said, "it seems like the harder it comes."
"I am a firm believer in lessons at an early age," said Lehane, the Ellicott City Y's aquatics coordinator. "I see some confidence growing in them when they start younger - but I think that's a good thing."
She wants her young charges to be able to put their faces in the pool and blow bubbles, not to be scared of the water. Most of the beginners wear flotation devices and learn to use their arms and legs to get more horizontal in the water. And there is plenty of talk of safety. "A lot of times, we'll say, 'If you kick your feet, you won't sink,' " she said.
During a recent class, she encouraged 3-year-old Christopher, his goggles over his eyes, to keep moving across the pool. "Let me see your big, strong muscles," she said, shouting over the din. "When you're swimming, I don't get to see them because they're under the water. So let's get those arms out. Face in and arms out."
Before the boys were dismissed, it was time to go over the pool rules. "Can you ever swim without a lifeguard?" Lehane asked. "No," the boys said.
"And you always have to have a swim teacher or a parent, right?"
ABOUT THE STUDY
The researchers analyzed medical examiner and coroner records and interviewed families of children who drowned in Maryland, North Carolina and more than a dozen counties in four other states between 2002 and 2005. The researchers compared characteristics of each child who drowned to another child of the same sex and the same geographical area who did not drown. Of the 61 children ages 1 to 4 who drowned, only two had received swimming lessons. Of the 134 1 to 4-year-olds in the control group who did not drown, 26 percent (35 children) had taken swimming lessons.
Dr. Ruth A. Brenner of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development said the data suggest swimming lessons provided some protection against drowning. "We are confident that swimming lessons do not increase drowning risk in this age group," she said.
