10% of Canary Islands students, mostly male, say that they learned to swim when they were between 6 and 12 years old after being unexpectedly pushed in the back by a family member or acquaintance, which, young people point out, caused them varying degrees of hydrophobia or thalassophobia.
This is extracted from a survey carried out by the drowning prevention platform 'Canarias, 1500 km of coastline' of almost 8,000 students from all over the archipelago, from Primary to Baccalaureate and FP stages.
Most of these children remember that scene as a negative experience that caused them aversion to water, with the push in many cases being on the edge of the deep end of a pool.
Likewise, there were also testimonies from students who were thrown by parents, grandparents or older siblings from a boat or a floating element into the sea at points where they could not stand.
'Canarias, 1500 km de Costa' has highlighted the testimony of a boy who is currently 15 years old, who related during a talk by the journalist and expert disseminator in drowning prevention, Sebastián Quintana, that "he was very relaxed standing next to the edge of a pool, watching how other people swam, at which point I was pushed hard from behind and fell into the water in the deepest part of the pool. I was six years old."
"At that moment -he continued- I felt panic, terror. I didn't know how to swim or even float and I went to the bottom. I felt like I was dying. It was my grandfather who jumped in to rescue me. The worst thing of all is that it had been him, my grandfather, who had given me that push that has changed my life."
For his part, the boy was the victim of a shock and subsequent post-traumatic stress disorder that has caused him thalassophobia (fear of the sea or the ocean, and, by extension, fear of water), according to psychology professionals.
"A real brutality"
Faced with these testimonies, Quintana has pointed out that "trying to teach a child to swim by throwing him into the water unexpectedly is a real brutality."
"The effects and psychological consequences on the minor will not only influence their terrible fear of water, but will cause serious alterations in their behavior that, for sure, will be active throughout their life," he pointed out.
The expert is convinced that this violent way of teaching a child to swim is a widespread practice throughout Spain and the world, but that it is usually overlapped as a simple anecdote of childhood, without major transcendence.
