Summer is just around the corner which means it’s time to think about water safety.
One mom is urging parents to consider the color bathing suits they purchase for their children.
“Don’t buy blue bathing suits!!”
Nikki Scarnati, a mother of two and swim instructor from Florida, shared her reason why on TikTok and it’s since gone viral.
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Scarnati, 32, dressed her 2-year-old daughter Claire in a blue bathing suit for the video and explained it was “not a regular bathing suit” Claire wore.
“I bought it on clearance specifically for this example for parents who wanted to learn,” she said.
Scarnati, who is a swim instructor for children between the ages 6 months and 6 years old, showed Claire treading water while wearing a blue bathing suit.
“Look how difficult it is to see her under the water — and this is in calm water,” she said.
Only Claire’s head and her blonde hair was easily visible.
She had her daughter move to the sun, and the same thing happened. The bathing suit blended in with the water.
“This is not with a whole bunch of other kids playing, splashing around and having a good time. Even look in the sunlight, look how difficult it is to see her with that bathing suit on ’cause it’s the same color as our environment.”
While growing up her mother dressed her and her other siblings in bright colors so she could keep track of them, so she had assumed the practice was well known.
But Scarnati said when she became an educator she realized not that many people knew about dressing children in bright colors.
“In the industry, it’s kind of widely known that blue bathing suits are problematic in pools and open water. So it was just one of the many things that I could help educate parents on, that would be applicable to really everyone,” she told Good Morning America.
“Blues are very common in bathing suit color and I think that [fuels] the frustration for a lot of professionals that work with children, especially in a pool setting.”
Scarnati recommends parents purchase bathing suit colors that “are going to stand out in the environment.”
“At the end of the day, drowning is the No. 1 cause of death in children under 4 and the second in children 5 to 12, so if I can give as many tips as possible to parents to help them make better decisions … just to help drowning statistics lower a little bit, then I’ve done my job,” she said.
It never occurred to me that the color of a bathing suit could make it more difficult to spot someone in the water.
Please share this important PSA to warn others!
