Getting a six year old to put on or keep on a bulky life jacket can be a battle if you allow that child to think no life jacket on the dock or boat is ever an option, just like seatbelts. With the recent death of a young girl at a nearby marina should be the wake up call to not be lenient.
I heard it time and time again, "Auntie I don't like it. I'm hot. Why. I know how to swim." I start with the authoritarian approach that you wear it, no option or negotiation. Later, sometimes way later, once they understand that I mean business and will not weaken. I explain to them why, and I will now use this detailed story because stories have the most impact for memory.
I use personal examples of Bud, 12 year old yellow labrador, falling into the water and not able to swim to shore and him being too heavy (65 pounds) to lift 3 feet out of the water. Whitley kept wanting to jump in and help him but I did not trust Bud to follow her to shore. Bud was loosing his sight and hearing plus getting weak in his back legs compared to a year ago. He did not have on his life jacket because we kept the jackets on the boat and we had just arrived. He never would mind me any way so when I yelled "no Bud, wait". He ignored me and hit the fastened lifelines and fell back into the water. A dinghy dock, a leash, and a young man were how Bud got out of that water after 30 minutes, and did not drown.
Alone on the boat JT fell in to the water at night when his shorts got caught on the stanchion and he fell between the concrete pier and the boat. There was no ladder and lost a shoe where he could not climb onto the shore without cutting his feet on the oyster shells. He swam to another sailboat with a ladder and climbed up. He called me at home to tell me what had happened. What if he had hit his head on the concrete? Always tell someone, a friend or loved one, what your intentions are.
Most drownings are silent and not violent. I remember once JT and I were swimming in a deep pool at my neighborhood pool. I for some reason took a breathe under water sucking in lots of water. I was able to get to the edge of the pool and cough up the water. Truly bizarre.
I grew up on a lake that was deep and cold. My parents insisted on us always wearing a ski belt when swimming or canoeing as well as our friends who came to visit. Regularly I would hear of a drowning, normally an adult, and their body was so deep and in the trees that they could not be recovered.
Wear your life jacket, and practice swimming too. At our marina off of Galveston Bay all children under 12 years of age must wear a life jacket on the dock. Never trust the netting around the stanchions. They give a false sense of security. Follow that same rule.
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