The confronting baby water survival technique dividing Australian parents
Video of a nine-month-old turning himself over and floating in a backyard swimming pool has divided parents over the "confronting" technique.
Roxanne Turner, from Queens Rock in Perth, put her son Max through 10 minutes a day of "survival lessons" at the Kids Aquatic Survival School for eight weeks.
She documented his progress and on Friday Bondi Rescue's Bruce "Hoppo" Hopkins shared the footage to his social media pages, saying it proves toddlers can learn how to float.
"You can't drown if you can float," Mr Hopkins, who is the Vice President of Surf Educators International, told 7 News Online.
"You can get that little bit more time, 10 or 15 or 20 seconds. If a child falls in and hadn't learnt [to float], he could be lying on the bottom of the pool."
The video shows the swim instructor picking Max up from the edge and flipping him over to put him face down in the pool.
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As she walks away, the toddler paddles and kicks for a few seconds before managing to turn himself upright and gets his nose and mouth out of the water to breathe.
Ms Turner said she enrolled Max in the classes after putting her daughter Ruby through when she was two years old.
The mother-of-two said he had learned to float within two to three weeks and believes the controversy is "completely misguided."
"It's very similar to parenting. They use positive reinforcement so once he floats at the top, he's rewarded by being lifted out of the water."
"It can be stressful, but they monitor the children to check them out and stop if he isn't into it."
Mr Hopkins said the survival swim school helps babies learn to not rely on floating devices and also helps parents build confidence in their child's abilities.
"I've had families down at the beach where a nine-year-old kid says 'I want to go surfing,'" he said.
"They’re confident, but their parents won’t let them go in so they lose that confidence."
But not all the responses have been positive, with many shocked parents labelling the footage as "confronting" and "unnecessary."
"Clever but I can’t watch and it’s not even my child!" one parent wrote.
Ian Campbell, the Managing Director of Jump! Swim Schools in Victoria, agreed the footage is "hard to watch."
"The first step is conditioning, it's not panicking their way into surviving," Mr Campbell told 7 News Online.
"This chid’s mouth is millimetres from the water's surface. I'm not convinced this is a safe example of a child being introduced to water."
Mr Campbell said he instead teaches children to hold their breath and propel themselves underwater once their "strength has kicked in to gear."
"Unfortunately [in the video], it is basic survival in its most brutal form," he said.
"Australians spend a lot of time in the water and we need to teach them to move in the water."
Both Hoppo and Ms Turner are pushing for government funding to be reintroduced for government funded survival swimming lessons for Australian children.
Between 2002 and 2016, 430 children under the age of five drowned in Australian waterways, with 92 per cent occurring in private swimming pools.
