by Daniela Haynes | Oct 18, 2022 | Mental Health and Relationships
Telling kids “Be careful!” doesn’t teach them how to be safe.
Source: Ndemello/Pixabay
The words “Be Careful!” just fall out of our mouths so easily. But this phrase gives children no useful information. It only tells them, “I’m anxious, so you should be, too!”
As parents, on the one hand, we want to keep our kids safe. On the other hand, we also want our kids to grow and become stronger. That means, as much as we might want to keep them bundled in bubble wrap, we need to encourage them to take reasonable risks. No one grows by staying comfortable.
Know your child
Some kids tend to be impulsive, and they need help noticing what’s going on around them and thinking before they act. Other kids tend to be overly cautious, and they need encouragement to take sensible risks.
Here are some possible alternatives to the automatic “Be Careful!”
Talk about safety beforehand
The best time to talk about safety is often before they go into a situation. You could ask, “What do you need to remember when we’re at the pool?” Or “Why is it important to stay near daddy at the fair?” Having the words come out of their mouths helps it stick in the front of their minds. This is especially useful for kids who tend to be impulsive.
Ask questions to help your child think things through
We can’t give instructions for all possible situations. We can help them learn to consider safety. “How can you throw the rocks safely, so no one gets hurt?” “Why do you think they have caution tape there?” “Do you see how close the other people are sitting? Where would be a safer place for you to play with your ball?”
Say what they should do and why
Kids are concrete thinkers. We want to give them safety instructions that create a picture in their minds of what they can or should do. It also helps if we give a reason. “Hold my hand in the parking lot because the cars can’t see you.” “Put your foot there so you can reach the next handhold.” “Sand in the eyes hurts, so keep it low when you dig or build.” “The oven is hot. Take two big steps back so you won’t get burned when I open it.”
Give one instruction at a time
Kids tune out long speeches, and they won’t remember a long list of what to do.
One instruction at a time is also useful for kids who are scared to do something because it lets them focus on the next step. “Do you see the kids lined up over there? Go stand there to hear the coach’s instructions.”
Say nothing or offer encouragement
Sometimes, the best choice is to stay silent about our worries and even offer encouragement. “You can do this. I’m here if you need me” is a powerful way to express our faith in our kids’ ability to cope.
I had a personal experience with one of my kids who decided to go to India for a summer internship during college. As a mom, I immediately thought of all the things that could go wrong: What if she got sick or injured? She was so far away, and she didn’t speak the languages! But I didn’t say a word about my fears and instead supported her in going because I wanted her to see herself as the kind of person who could explore the world. She did end up getting sick, and she managed it. She also had a wonderful adventure.
This content was originally published here.
by Daniela Haynes | Oct 18, 2022 | Mental Health and Relationships
At what point are we satisfied with our achievements?
Source: Karolina Grabowska/Pexels
In nearly 20 years of practicing therapy, I’ve never had anyone walk into a session and say something like, “Due to my last promotion, I finally achieved complete wholeness and contentment in life.”
Once the initial high wears off, people’s reaction to success is usually bewilderment: “I’ve achieved the goal I thought would make me happy. But I’m back to being as miserable as ever. Why didn’t it work?”
Often their natural inclination is to conclude, “I obviously just didn’t set my goal high enough. When I achieve the next milestone, then I will be happy.” The process of resetting to a baseline level of happiness is known as the hedonic treadmill ().
As a therapist in Silicon Valley who has worked with many techs and business professionals, I notice the same trend repeatedly. People are shocked to discover that no amount of achievement brings the happiness they’ve been striving for. In many cases, the complete opposite holds. People sacrifice their mental health on the altar of achievement.
Relationships with spouses and children disintegrate. Friends, family, and hobbies all fall by the wayside. We eventually lose our very selves. But, consciously or not, the message people continue to cling to is that someday, all of this emotional hardship will be worth it when they reach a high enough mountain peak in the corporate promised land.
On a global scale, we can see some parallels when authoritarian ideologies justify destruction in the name of the greater good or in their belief that injustice can be tolerated if it will help usher in some vaguely understood utopic era when it will no longer be necessary. Nations and individuals can rationalize any level of sacrifice and destruction in the quest for some nebulous idealized future.
The problem is that no such utopia is coming. It never does. The present will always be messy and flawed. And, just as it was for Little Orphan Annie, our happiness will be a matter perpetually deferred until “Tomorrow.”
I don’t blame people for this error, which is entirely understandable given our social context. Society engrains several harmful messages on us from an early age. An example of such a message is that there is a single formula for happiness: get good grades, so you get into a good college, so you get a good job so that you can achieve status and money, and then you will be happy.
By the time people reach career age, they have been steeped in this mythos for decades and believe in it unquestionably. Deprogramming a message after such an extended period, with a lifetime of sunk cost and effort invested in a mythos, can be challenging to say the least.
Another maladaptive message we receive in tandem is that we are fundamentally inadequate; even if we do achieve, it should have been accomplished quicker and better by default. A recent example of this is quarterback Tom Brady breaking not one but two tablet computers in angry outbursts during a game he ultimately won (Nesbitt, 2022). Even one of the most accomplished athletes felt powerful distress when he felt threatened during a superfluous achievement. That is compelling evidence that such a mindset cannot and will not lead to happiness for anyone.
This maladaptive message can be confirmed by simply looking at the wealthiest and most successful people in the world, who often lead troubled, unhappy, and lonely lives. Generally, the farther up the ladder you go, the more miserable you are.
Take a recent public example. One of the first things Elon Musk’s daughter did when she turned 18 was file for a name change to distance herself from her father. She told the court, “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape, or form” (Associated Press, 2022). How many days did he stay late at work rather than spend time with her and his other children? How much money makes losing our child worthwhile?
There are a few initial steps we can take to loosen the grip with which inadequacy controls our lives:
This content was originally published here.
by Daniela Haynes | Oct 18, 2022 | Mental Health and Relationships
Long-time Batman scribe and the creator of on Arkhaven, Chuck Dixon, recently claimed that most of the classic superheroes like Superman grew “out of the sense of populism” of the Great Depression era.
Action Comics #1
Dixon made the assertion during his Ask Chuck Dixon #115 video where Kenneth Ng asked a question regarding the assertion that geek culture and comics have always been left wing and that the heroes have always been left wing while the right wings have always been villains.
After providing a cursory summary of the Great Depression era and the nature of President Roosevelt’s administration, Dixon specifically homed in a case involving the Schechter brothers and how the United States government attempted to shut their two butcher shops that they operated in Brooklyn, New York down.
Dixon detailed, “The Works Project Administration would not acknowledge that the Schechter brothers were exceeding the parameters of the regulations required of them and they tried to shut them down. Well, the Schecters went to work and it went public. And here the United States got to see these hard-working brothers being forced out of business by the government, being bullied by the government.”
He continued, “And the American public acted vociferously against this. They made their displeasure at this well known. And the WPA had to back down. And that’s when FDR and his cabinet realized we may have gone too far here. And they shut down the WPA, the National Recovery Administration, and the Civilian Conversation Corps very rapidly, and that was the end of those government agencies.”
Action Comics #1
“And what is that? Where did that politics come from? Were they coming from the right? Were they coming from the left? No, they were coming from a sense of morality,” he asserted. “They were coming from a sense of who we are as Americans, what we’ll stand for and what we won’t stand for. And that at the root of it is populism.
“It didn’t matter what side of the political spectrum you were on. And back then people didn’t really think about that,” he elaborated. “You were either a Democrat or a Republican. You didn’t think about the political spectrum. But it didn’t matter what side of that spectrum, it didn’t matter what party you voted for, you knew the Schechters were getting a raw deal. They were getting bullied because they were the little guy. And FDR and his gang though they were going to get away with it, but they didn’t.”
Action Comics #3
Moving to address how this relates to comics, Dixon says, “Superman and most of the superheroes, I would say all of the superheroes of this period, they grow out of that sense of populism. Superman is created by two young guys, two young Jewish guys and that’s important, and they created Superman as an ideal, but he’s a populist ideal. He’s a hero for the everyman. He’s the guy we could all be.”
“In early stories, and this is what the leftists like to point out, in early stories Superman went after evil landlords and evil corporations and things like that. And they think that makes him a left-wing hero. Well, it’s not because who likes an evil landlord? Who like an evil corporate raider? Who likes someone who’s cheating the public? Who likes a corrupt politician? There’s no politics there. That’s just immoral and we’re all supposed to be disdainful of immorality, and unfairness, and injustice,” he declared.
Action Comics #3
Dixon went on, “So when Superman is giving a hard time to a landlord who was evicting widows and orphans that was something everybody could get behind, that wasn’t a political thing. And as we see today, battling an evil businessman, well, a lot of your businessmen today are to the left.”
“I know that it wasn’t political,” he proclaims. “Siegel and Shuster were creating a great American hero. And as I’ve said in videos before they were creating this from a minority point of view. I don’t know Siegel and Shuster’s entire history, but I bet anything they were first generation Americans. I’ll bet that German was spoke at their home. German and Yiddish, I’m willing to bet that. And they were a minority that wasn’t always looked upon favorably.”
Action Comics #4
Dixon detailed, “But they loved America even when America didn’t love them back. And they created Superman as a lot of these comic book created Superman as a wish fulfillment figure. A figure of strength, and morality, and principles. The guy who would come in and see that justice was done. And that’s why truth, justice, and the American way. That’s what Superman stands for. He isn’t left-wing. He isn’t right-wing. He is a populist hero.”
“And that’s why no matter what part of the political spectrum you’re coming from you can relate to Superman, you can project yourself onto Superman,” he said. “And all of the best, iconic superhero characters are that way. You can project yourself. You can believe whatever you want to believe about them because they’re a paragon.”
“And you can assign them — you can believe that Superman is a Republican or an independent or — it doesn’t matter as long as — it should never be specified. Because it’s a shared ideals no matter where you come from politically unless you’re far left in which case you don’t really have any ideals or principles,” he stated.
Action Comics #4
Dixon would also address Captain America, “Same thing for Cap. Captain America, they love pointing out, ‘He beat up fascists.’ So he beat up right-wing people. And they love to say well if Captain America were here he’d be punching Trump today.”
“The problem is Hitler wasn’t a right-winger,” Dixon asserts. “In the 1920s, people in academia and people in politics and people in leadership positions in this country thought Mussolini had all the answers, baby. He was turning Italy around in the 20s. The trains were running on time as the cliché goes. And they thought he was the coolest thing ever and a lot of academics traveled over there. They traveled over to see what Mussolini was up to. They traveled over there to see what Stalin was up to and they thought it was all cool. It was peachy keen.”
Captain America Comics #1
“Because they were only shown of course the best parts,” Dixon relayed. “They weren’t shown all the hungry Italians starving. They weren’t shown the famines in the Ukraine. They were on a Disneyland tour of far left ideology of far left socialism and fascism. And fascism is to the left, I’m sorry to tell you that. Hitler was a national socialist.”
“Right-wing is individualism. Right-wing is leave me alone, stop telling me what to do. The further you get to the left, the more people want to tell you what to do,” he added.
Captain America Comics #2
“So Cap, created as another wish fulfillment figure by another couple of first generation Americans, children of immigrants, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby,” Dixon explained. “They created Captain America as a wish fulfillment figure to go after a guy and an ideology that was murdering probably relatives of theirs in Europe. Rounding up the family members that were left behind.”
“And the dangers of Nazism and the dangers of anti-Semitism were clear to see even here in the United States,” he said. “It was a sort of wave of thought. I’m not going to say it was common, but it was there. This is a time when the Ku Klux Klan marched on Washington in the hundreds of thousands and no one really thought anything about it.”
Captain America Comics #1
“So Simon and Kirby create this character that embodies America’s distaste for the far-left as represented in this picture by Adolf Hitler,” he proclaims. “I’m sorry if you are on the far-left and that offends you, but that’s the truth. Hitler was no kind of right-winger. You can call him that all day long, but it simply isn’t true. He held no right-wing principles. He wanted to destroy the German family. He wanted to destroy the Church. He wanted to destroy all the traditional ways of life in Germany and replace it with the state. And that in no way, shape, or form is a right-wing ideal.”
“And so Cap comes along, he represents all of us and he represents that we are going to be in this fight,” Dixon explains. “That Americans are going to have to sacrifice and everything else. So he’s this wish fulfillment ideal that if we could just have a guy go over there and start punching the hell out of these creeps and get this settled. And there’s nothing political about that.”
Captain America Comics #1
Dixon then educates, “At this point in our history, this was about survival. If the American way was going to survive we were going to have to defeat this menace. We had no choice in this matter. We were going to have to defeat the creeping fascism that was going to spread all across the world. These were desperate days. I know they don’t teach a lot of World War II in school, but these were desperate days. Captain America appears at a time when Europe is for the most part under the Nazi heel. And England is going to be the next to fall and when it does it is all over baby. When England falls America has no foothold in Europe. They have no friend left in Europe. ”
“So these were desperate times for America and for the world,” he reiterates. “And Cap embodies the hope for a future and also the rah-rah spirit. I mean it’s propaganda, but propaganda can be good. The rah-rah spirit that we’re Americans, baby. We’re tough. We’re going to make it through this okay and Cap was part of that.”
Captain America Comics #1
Comparing this to modern comics, Dixon then says, “Now this is in contrast to today where the creators, I use that term loosely, have a political agenda and they want to push it and they want to tell you what to think.”
“Nobody in the old comics, nobody until 2000, for the most part, was teaching you what to think,” he points out. “They might present an issue. I did lots of issue comics, but I never told you what to think on any issues. I presented them as grist for dramatic stories. That’s the only reason I presented the issues. I didn’t present the issues because I wanted to be a very special episode of Robin. I presented them because these are great story opportunities, and also they are things that people are dealing with and so you want to be able relate.”
My Sister Suprema Episode 22: Meet The Villain
“Even though these are these fantastical costumed and masked characters, you want to be able to relate to them and know that they share the problems of your world even in their imaginary world,” Dixon relayed. “So I would deal with issues, but I’d never insert my politics because that’s not what readers want to read. You don’t want to be preached at.”
“Well, that’s all these comics do know. They either try to preach you, or shame you, or offend you, or whatever, or get you to just nod in agreement. They bring out a comic and if you don’t celebrate it and think it’s the most wonderful comic ever, you’re a racist and a bigot, and a homophobe, and a transphobe, or whatever else other name they want to call you. All of which are meaningless now because of overuse,” he says.
“The only virtue their book has is as a litmus test for where you stand on the spectrum and it makes for some really, really crappy comics as we have all been witness to,” he concluded.
Source: M.O.M.: Mother of Madness #1
What do you make of Dixon’s rebuttal of the claim that superheroes and comics have always been left wing?
This content was originally published here.
by Daniela Haynes | Oct 18, 2022 | Mental Health and Relationships
So you know how every time there is a mass shooting at a school and we start saying “Sure would be nice if we could have some gun control like all of the normal countries have!,” Republicans come right back with “How dare you politicize a tragedy involving guns to try and make such tragedies less common! It’s not about guns, it’s about mental illness!” like those other countries don’t have mental illness, and then we have to explain very few mass shooters actually have diagnosable mental health conditions and people with such conditions are actually more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators of it?
You know how they went around for months and years lamenting the effect lockdowns and remote learning and masking were going to have on children’s mental health?
Well! Those same Republicans — the ones in the House, anyway — were provided with an opportunity this week to fund a bill that would provide funding for mental health services at schools across the country. All but one of them decided against that. Literally one Republican, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, voted for the Mental Health Matters Act. It still passed, 220 to 205 because Democrats have a majority, but they didn’t vote for it.
Introduced by Democratic Rep. Mark DeSaulnier of California, the Mental Health Matters Act “creates various grants to increase the number of school-based mental health services providers, establishes requirements for institutions of higher education concerning students with disabilities, and prohibits arbitration and discretionary clauses in employer-sponsored benefit plans under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.”
Via The Hill:
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.), the sponsor of the bill, said his legislation is needed to address the ripple effect student that mental health concerns are having on schools and educators.
“Educators have been forced to play an outsized role in supporting and responding to students’ mental health needs, leading to increased depression and trauma among educators, their students, and the families and the community. However, our schools do not have the specialized staff necessary to respond to the increased prevalence and complexity of students’ mental health needs,” he said.
“Simply put, the Mental Health Matters Act delivers the resources students, educators, and families need to improve their well-being,” DeSaulnier added.
It’s true, schools generally do not have specialized staff to handle these issues. Heck, 60 percent of schools in the US don’t even have a full time school nurse. That’s not good!
So why were Republicans against this?
Rep. Virginia Foxx (N.C.), the top Republican on the Education and Labor Committee, said the “country would be better off without” the legislation on the floor.
She specifically took issue with the provision that allows the Labor Department secretary to levy civil monetary penalties on sponsors of plans and administrators of group health plans if they do not fulfill parity requirements regarding mental health.
“Providing [the Department of Labor] with the authority to level civil monetary penalties against plans and increase their risk of litigation will only force plans to drop mental health coverage,” Foxx argued.
Just to be clear, her issue is not with the bill itself, but with it being enforced in any meaningful way. So she would be fine with a bill meant to address mental health, but only so long as it did not inconvenience the health insurance companies whose job it is to provide mental health coverage. Our wonderful, wonderful health insurance companies whose entire business model is built upon taking our money and then finding ways to not cover the things we need it for.
This “parity” is essentially that they can’t use the results of genetic testing in order to disqualify someone from coverage for mental health or substance use disorder benefits or charge them more money for their plan, a thing that it seems relatively easy to do.
What this tells us is that not only do Republicans care more about helping health insurance companies than people, but that they don’t actually believe any of the things they say about mental health. They know the only reason they cry “mental illness” after mass shootings is because they are trying to protect their guns. Surely, if they really thought that this was the cause of these endless massacres, they’d have put out their own bill by now.
OPEN THREAD!
Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.
Wonkette is independent and fully funded by readers like you. Click below to tip us!
This content was originally published here.
by Daniela Haynes | Oct 18, 2022 | Mental Health and Relationships
Tamera Mowry-Housley is getting as real as possible in her new book, “You Should Sit Down for This: A Memoir about Life, Wine, and Cookies.”
In the memoir, Mowry-Housley, 44, talks about everything from her sex life with husband Adam Housley to the “horrible anxiety” that she experienced on “The Real.”
“That life is grinding,” she tells TODAY. “A lot of people don’t understand how hard it is to actually do a daytime talk show. One, you have to have so much energy at the butt crack of dawn, like all the time. I can remember there was one season I did not remember at all, and it’s because I just had my baby. And I was nursing her and I just didn’t sleep.”
After six seasons on the Emmy-winning program, the “Sister, Sister” alum exited the show in 2020 to focus more on her family and her true passion, acting. However, her decision to leave wasn’t an easy one.
Mowry-Housley writes that her team told her that “The Real” was a safe gig for her, and if she left, they couldn’t guarantee her another job.
Taking a leap of faith, Mowry-Housley decided to trust her intuition and ended up booking a highly sought-after role on the Hallmark Channel, where she’s starred in four movies to date and has another one coming in November.
Looking back on her time on “The Real,” Mowry-Housley says that she experienced great anxiety every day flying from her Napa Valley home to the show’s LA set and having to defend her marriage, as well as her lifestyle choices on the program.
In her book, she said that she used to cry in her dressing room and felt “trapped” being on the show. She recalled the first four years of her time on “The Real” being “one of the unhappiest times” of her life.
It was one of the unhappiest times of my life. I suffered horrible anxiety, I’d throw up in my dressing room (and) I drank way too much.
On top of taking care of her child, Mowry-Housley — who’s a mom to two kids, Aden, 9, and Ariah, 7 — had to deal with the constant backlash she faced for being married to Housley, a former Fox News senior correspondent.
In September 2018, Mowry-Housley made headlines when she said that her husband, who is white, was “not a racist” on “The Real.” Due to his background in Fox News, some viewers thought that Housley was a little misguided in his views on social issues.
But now that she’s had time to think about the statement that she made on national TV, Mowry-Housley said that she wished she didn’t address the world in that manner because she realized that not everyone had the same opinion about her husband.
“Being away from ‘The Real,’ I didn’t realize what a bubble we lived in. So I wish I wouldn’t have addressed the world massively with something that was just spoken of in a bubble,” Mowry-Housley said.
“I feel like when I was on ‘The Real,’ we were just a part of this bubble. And sometimes when you’re a part of that bubble, the bubble seems bigger than what it actually is,” she continued. “I wish I didn’t give it any energy.”
The “Twitches” star noted that she also felt the need to address the comments surrounding her husband because a producer on the show “encouraged” her to do so. But once she spoke up about it on national TV, she realized that it made the situation even worse.
The whole debacle made Mowry-Housley learn how to tune out her naysayers and that’s one of the “amazing learning experiences” that she said she got from “The Real.”
Next year, Mowry-Housley will celebrate her 12th wedding anniversary with Housley. After 18 years together, she says that they still have an amazing sex life and she enjoys sex way more than people may think.
Due to her religious background and her good-girl persona on TV, Mowry-Housley writes that people gravely misjudge her as a person.
In fact, she says she’s a “true freak in the sheets.”
“Go ahead and do what you want with that information,” she playfully says in her book.
Mowry-Housley even tells readers how they can spice up their sex life. One thing she says she does with Housley is make a list of all the places where she wants them to have sex.
A few locations that made the cut were the rooftop of a skyscraper, on top of a car in the rain, a private beach on a private island with the waves lapping at her feet, and every continent and every room in their house.
“My sister always said that I’m a very sexual and sensual human being, like it is just in my DNA,” Mowry-Housley tells TODAY. “And just because you’re religious, and you’re spiritual and you’re a Christian, that doesn’t take that away.”
Mowry-Housley said she felt the need to open up about her sex life because she wanted other women to feel more comfortable talking about their sexuality, especially if they’re in their 40s.
“I wanted to share that aspect of it,” she said. “I wanted to get rid of all those stereotypes. Own your man. Own your sex life and love it! Just because you’ve been married for over a decade that doesn’t mean that you have to dry up.”
All throughout her book, Mowry-Housley shares “bite-sized drops of wisdom” with her fans “that can spark happiness, inspire change, and empower you to live your most delicious life.” She calls them “Tameraisms,” and they’re all lessons that she learned from growing up as a teen star.
She acknowledges that “The Real” gave her a thick skin, and because of that, she wasn’t afraid to talk about the death of her niece in her book, her time on “The Real” or her sex life with Housley.
Although she thought about taking out a few things, she decided to keep them all in because she wanted to be as open with her fans as possible.
“This is a book about my truth,” Mowry-Housley says. “And in doing so, I’ve learned by being on ‘The Real,’ when you’re vulnerable when you’re honest, there’s always someone out there who may be going through the same thing. And I know for me when I hear that on the other side, knowing that I’m not alone, you feel empowered.”
Related video:
This content was originally published here.
by Daniela Haynes | Oct 18, 2022 | Mental Health and Relationships
A Yorkshire teacher has described the moment she realised a pupil was missing when they were on a school trip to France.
Chantelle Lewis gave evidence yesterday in a French court. She is one of three teachers from East Yorkshire accused of negligence in connection to the death of Jessica Lawson.
Chantelle said she remembered asking “where’s Jess?” after the collapse of a pontoon while the schoolkids were swimming a lake near Limoges in France. Jessica, 12, was pulled out of the lake – but sadly died in hospital the next day.
Liginiac town and the lifeguard Leo Lemaire are also accused of negligence. As Ms Lewis appeared yesterday, Jessica’s parents Tony and Brenda watched from the public gallery at court, HullLive reports.
Ms Lewis was joined by the other two teachers – Daisy Stathers and Steve Layne at the court in Tulle. The three of them taught at Wolfreton School in Willerby.
Former PE teacher Ms Lewis, 34, told the court she was not “refusing to accept” her responsibility. She said: “I started to panic and asked ‘where’s Jess’?” as the emotion overcame her.
Ms Lewis added to the court she “wouldn’t say there was a risk” because the children knew how to swim, and she had spoken to Jessica’s parents before the trip.
Head of jurisdiction in Tulle, Marie-Sophie Waguette, opened the hearing, and said there should have been at least three chains securing the pontoon. However, a picture shown to the court only showed two chains.
Ms Lewis was asked why she had not ordered children out of the water when the pontoon capsized. She responded: “It was quick … these were split seconds.”
Mr Layne, 46, was also questioned, and said he also did not immediately tell the kids to get out of the water as his “first action … was to look towards the lifeguard to gauge his reaction”. He told the court he did not know the guidelines for swimming in France and had not asked about them.
Mr Layne said: “We checked with the lifeguard and we concluded the conditions were okay. When I spoke to the students I did say they could use the pontoon but I told them in using it they weren’t to do any diving, not to be silly, to respect other people around it and to not scream and shout. I did tell them not to go diving and not to do any bombing in a tuck position.”
“I didn’t think it was dangerous. When the platform capsized I checked first of all whether there was any sort of distress from the students. I checked over my shoulder to see the lifeguard, to see his reaction, as he was looking in the direction of the platform – but there was no distress from him,” he added.
“Just as the pontoon went over a couple (of children) did try to get to get it right again and I told them to leave it alone and get out of the water. As the kids were coming out the water we did quickly check to see who was missing and realised that Jessica Lawson was missing.
“When we did the risk assessment I actually saw the pontoon and I saw it as a safety feature. Should they swim, they could use it as something to hang on to.”
The case is expected to last two days, and will continue.
This content was originally published here.
