Today’s Customize Your Life interview is especially relevant to any of you who are parents or caregivers to young children. I wanted to include this conversation because building better parenting skills is a very important part of Customizing Your Life.
Tony and I want you to have the best shot at bringing up your kid to be the best human they can be on this planet. And part of that is creating awareness, gathering resources, and introducing you to inspirational people. They can help you navigate through the big, wonderful, but sometimes confusing world of parenting.
Did you know that drowning is the leading cause of accidental death for kids, ages 1-4? The truth is, I had no idea about this, until recently.
It was through some viral videos on the internet, that I found out about the ISR community, which stands for Infant Swimming Resources.
ISR is our nation’s safest provider of survival swimming lessons for children six months to six years of age. Their mission, “Not One More Child Drowns,” is a vital one. It is the driving force behind ISR’s independent instructors, whose sole focus is to save lives.
When I started to become a part of the ISR community, I found out that some other moms who attended these classes had already lost a child.
That shook me. Also, the fact that drowning is a major cause of infant deaths—I did not want to be a part of that statistic. So, I signed up my daughter for the ISR lessons.
Believe it or not, within just 5 weeks, my 14-month-old was independent in the water. Isn’t that amazing?
Now I want to share with you some of the wealth of information and awareness I have been gifted with.
So, today, on Customize Your Life, we sit down for a one-on-one with Melissa Larsen. Melissa is my feisty daughter’s ISR instructor.
Melissa was originally an occupational therapist, but one day, she found a viral video of a baby floating, having learned these skills through ISR. This interested her, and she followed her curiosity.
Eventually, Melissa fell in love with the mission of preventing drowning and became a certified ISR instructor. In this interview, she gives us a taste of what ISR is, including:
Melissa told me, “We want that child to know that if they fell in fully clothed, they have confidence to find their air and help themselves until help arrives. We want them to know that if they are in trouble, they have that skill.”
You know, it was hard to put my daughter through these classes. But it was even more heartbreaking to hear about parents who had lost a child to drowning.
After our sessions, I realized how important this is. Trust me, it is so much better to watch your child struggle through the lessons, than those 10 fatal seconds where you’ll wish you had.
I have proof that the method works, because my own child fell in the water. And I watched with my own eyes how she used the skills she learned with ISR to float up to the surface by herself. I saw her learning to fight for her life in the water for the first time. We equipped her with the right skills.
To date, ISR has delivered more than 8,000,000 ISR Self-Rescue® lessons and saved more than 800 lives. If you want to have the security and peace of mind as a parent, while giving your child the competence, confidence and skills of aquatic safety, please watch this video.
Then, after you watch, please share it so that your friends can also help spread awareness.
Are you ready to Customize Your Life by improving every area of your life, including parenting?
Would you like to gift your own children the confidence they need in emergency situations?
Learning is a never-ending, lifelong journey, but we are grateful to share these lessons and milestones with you.
If you have tried ISR yourself, or know of anyone who has benefitted from it, tell us about it in the comments below. Or, feel free to post any questions you may have about this program, and we’ll try to answer each one.
Thanks for watching!