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One Mum has had to defend her choices after posting a video of her child on TikTok taken during swimming lessons. The video has been watched by millions of people and has divided opinion on the best way to teach children how to swim.

American mother of two, Krysta Meyer recently posted a video of her son Oliver taken during his swim survival class Little Fins Swim School in Colorado Springs. Eight-month-old Oliver, who is in full care of his instructor, is thrown into the pool and allowed to come to the surface himself and kick to keep afloat. The instructor slips into the pool after Oliver has been thrown in.

WATCH:

@mom.of.2.boyssSince tiktok wanted to remove this for violating guidelines. ???? please do your research before reporting or removing♬ original sound – mom.of.2.boyss

Ms Meyer reposted the video after it was taken down by TikTok. Her original post, which had more than 70 million views, gushed over how amazed she was by her baby’s ability and how he was “a little fish”. The updated video and caption reads “Since tiktok wanted to remove this for violating guidelines. ???? please do your research before reporting or removing”. Her original post has now been restored.

Since posting the video Krysta has been bombarded with death threats and hate comments such as “Lil man’s not swimming, he is fighting for his life” and “Ur drowning the baby”.

Krysta’s aim of posting the video was to ‘educate’ people on how you can teach a baby to flip over if they fall into the water. Motherly spoke with Krysta who said “I get it, it looks bad. It’s not for everyone” though Krysta also mentioned she is glad that the video is encouraging people to think about water safety and could potentially help save lives.

Motherly also spoke with Laurie Armstrong, the owner of Little Fins Swim School who said “Our instructors are highly trained and we provide constant ongoing professional development training and skills workshops to keep up on all the latest safety information and skills. In the video, Ms. Jill tossed the baby in the pool. We do this as part of our safety and survival level to pass, because when kids fall into water, it’s not always graceful or pretty. It can be a disorienting experience.”

The video has also been posted to several Facebook pages with many commenting on how ‘awful’ the video is, that ‘scaring babies is not teaching them how to swim’.

If you’d like to view the latest water safety tips for children, please click here.

Image source: TikTok

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  • its on extreem reaction if someone does something that a person doesnt agree with. How odd to then want to kill them. If you feel that way then surely its time to get therapy.

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  • I did this with both my kids when they were 6months old and5months old and it’s the best thing to do considering the deaths of children drowning in backyard pools. There’s nothing dangerous or hurtful in any way. So I suggest everyone should teach their kids to swim from an early age.

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  • I couldn’t see the video but I feel we should only ever wait until our child is ready to do something like this it should never be forced

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  • everyone has an opinion on what a bad parent is – but very rarely what a good parent is

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  • I’d be super nervous as how quickly can a baby drown if the instructor didn’t get to it quick enough?

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  • I can understand needing to teach survival skills to bubs when little especially if you have a pool at home. I personally don’t think I could watch my baby do these sort of lessons. So I’ll just be waiting to do regular swim lessons for my girls

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  • It’s something I might stress about doing. But ultimately, theyre teaching the babies a life saving skill, thats important

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  • Again, you have to expect that if you post anything on social media some people will absolutely bash you about whatever you are doing.

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  • everyone is different

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  • I’ve seen similar posts in the past. I don’t like the method. But it’s absurd what people are threatening!

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  • My goodness the world has gone crazy. I don’t agree with the lesson technique but death threats is crazy

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  • Death threats?! Method looks scary but that baby did a great job floating and then swimming. Such an important skill.

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  • The baby was perfectly safe,.

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  • Death threats ?!!

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  • Guess everyone an expert. Guess when a baby falls into the water it’s Only gentle. They have experts there they know what they doing

    Reply

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