[dropcap size=big]S[/dropcap]ummer is around the corner. Pools all over Los Angeles are preparing for the season. And Mayra Del Rio has already made sure her four year-old son is ready for the water this year because “I don’t know how to swim myself,” she lets out with a sigh that turns into a chuckle.
“It’s kind of hard to be traveling and just going to different places where there’s areas of water and not knowing how to swim,” she says. “I just want [my son] to be able to be free and learn how to swim without being scared of the water.”
According to a 2017 USA Swimming Foundation study, 45 percent of Latino children do not know how to swim or have low swimming ability, putting them at risk of drowning. That number rises depending on parent’s swimming ability — 62 percent of Latino children are likely to not have good swimming skills if their parents have no or low swimming ability.
Del Rio doesn’t want her son to be a part of that statistic. Earlier this year he began his first swimming lessons. Weeks later, he began level two classes.
“If he is ever in a situation where he needs to know how to swim, he’ll be able to survive,“ Del Rio says. “It’s a life skill that not everybody [has]. Just in case, like I said, if we are ever around an environment where there is a pool, and accidents do happen, he’ll be able to swim.”