A mom named Krista Meyer seems to have put her TikTok account to private after a video she posted when viral that involves chucking a baby into a body of water.
Featured Video
Hide
In the clip, which Buzzfeed reports was viewed over 50 million times, a swimming instructor is holding an infant over a pool, when she suddenly drops them. The baby slips underwater, and she gets into the pool to meet him as he rises to the surface on his own. It’s definitely kind of shocking.
Advertisement
Hide
The TikTok was filmed at a swimming school in Colorado called Little Fins, and this is apparently a big part of their curriculum. The original caption of Meyer’s video read, “Oliver amazes me every week! I can’t believe he is barely two months in and is catching on so fast. He is a little fish.”
The video is really horrifying some people, who think this is completely dangerous. But Little Fins co-owner Lauri Armstrong defends the practice as being imperative to swimming safety.
“The whole premise behind what we do is safety,” Armstrong told Buzzfeed. “We teach 8-month-olds to assess their situation and find an exit strategy [in water]. I know it seems crazy.”
The point is that if a kid falls in water by accident, they could easily panic, because it won’t be an easy entry.
Advertisement
Hide
“When kids fall into bodies of water, it’s often not pretty. It’s often very disorienting,” she explained. “They have to learn to come up and recover on their own.”
The baby does seem pretty chill, considering it being chucked in water. But there are a fair number of people who think there’s no proof that this system is safe for kids, and Meyer has been getting a lot of heat.
“A lot of people are seeing a kid being thrown into the water and thinking, That’s not good! You shouldn’t be doing that!” said Meyer. “I’ve gotten death threats. I’ve had people tell me I’m the worst kind of mom, that I’m endangering my children, that I’m traumatizing them.”
This also isn’t the baby’s first lesson, but something they work up to. There are a lot of people who believe a child capable of crawling should be taught to swim, and infants often have a propensity for it because they were scooting around the womb not too long ago. However, others told Buzzfeed that Little Fins goes too far, like Parents Preventing Childhood Drowning cofounder Jenny Bennett.
“This is an example of an unrealistic scenario,” Bennett said. “If a child is in this position, it would not be an accident, it would be considered a homicide.”
Advertisement
Hide
It definitely would be if you tried this at home—Little Fins instructors are highly trained, according to Armstrong. So, whatever you think of the video, make sure your kids learn to swim in a safe environment, preferably with an instructor.
*First Published: June 26, 2021, 7:07 am
0 Comments