Ensure every member of your family learns to swim so they at least achieve skills of water competency: able to enter the water, get a breath, stay afloat, change position, swim a distance then get out of the water safely.

Employ layers of protection including barriers to prevent access to water, life jackets, and close supervision of children to prevent drowning.

Know what to do in a water emergency – including how to help someone in trouble in the water safely, call for emergency help and CPR.

What Does It Mean to Be Water Competent?

Water competency is a way of improving water safety for yourself and those around you through avoiding common dangers, developing fundamental water safety skills to make you safer in and around the water, and knowing how to prevent and respond to drowning emergencies. Water competency has 3 main components: water smarts, swimming skills and helping others.

Water Smarts

Take these sensible precautions when you’re around water (even if you’re not planning to swim):

• Know your limitations, including physical fitness, medical conditions.
• Never swim alone; swim with lifeguards and/or water watchers present.
• Wear a U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket appropriate for your weight and size and the water activity. Always wear a life jacket while boating, regardless of swimming skill.
• Swim sober.
• Understand the dangers of hyperventilation and hypoxic blackout.
• Know how to call for help.
• Understand and adjust for the unique risks of the water environment you are in, such as:
  • River currents.
  • Ocean rip currents.
  • Water temperature.
  • Shallow or unclear water.
  • Underwater hazards, such as vegetation and animals.

Swimming Skills

Learn how to perform these 5 skills in every type of water environment that you may encounter (such as in home pools, oceans, lakes, rivers and streams):

1. Enter water that’s over your head, then return to the surface.
2. Float or tread water for at least 1 minute.
3. Turn over and turn around in the water.
4. Swim at least 25 yards.
5. Exit the water.

Helping Others

These actions will help your family avoid emergencies – and help you respond if an emergency occurs:

• Paying close attention to children or weak swimmers you are supervising in or near water.
• Knowing the signs that someone is drowning.
• Knowing ways to safely assist a drowning person, such as “reach or throw, don’t go”.
• Knowing CPR and first aid.

Saying thank you is nothing new. But practicing gratitude — regularly focusing on the positive parts of your life — is about more than having good manners. It can be a powerful health habit.

Research shows that practicing gratitude — 15 minutes a day, five days a week — for at least six weeks can enhance mental wellness and possibly promote a lasting change in perspective. Gratitude and its mental health benefits can also positively affect your physical health.

Health benefits of being thankful

You’ll get the biggest health benefits of gratitude when it becomes habitual and part of your thought process. But even allotting some time each day or week to prioritize gratitude can be beneficial.

Reduce depression

A review of 70 studies that include responses from more than 26,000 people found an association between higher levels of gratitude and lower levels of depression. But more research needs to be done to understand the association.

Gratitude seems to reduce depression symptoms — people with a grateful mindset report higher satisfaction with life, strong social relationships and more self-esteem than those who don’t practice gratitude. But it’s also possible that depressed people are less likely to practice gratitude. Most likely, there’s a continuous relationship where gratitude lessens symptoms of depression, allowing people to recognize what they have.

Lessen anxiety

Anxiety often involves worrying and negative thinking — typically about things that happened in the past or may occur in the future.

Gratitude can be a coping tool for anxiety. Regularly practicing gratitude combats negative thinking patterns by keeping thoughts focused on the present. If you find yourself focusing on negative thoughts about the past or future, challenge yourself to find something you are grateful for now. It will break the negative thought process and return you to the present.

Support heart health

Many benefits of gratitude also support heart health. Improving depression symptoms, sleep, diet and exercise reduces the risk of heart disease. Several studies show that a grateful mindset positively affects biomarkers associated with the risk for heart disease.

A 2021 review of research also finds that keeping a gratitude journal can cause a significant drop in diastolic blood pressure — the force your heart exerts between beats. Having grateful thoughts, even if you don’t write them down, also helps your heart by slowing and regulating your breathing to synchronize with your heartbeat.

Relieve stress

Stress triggers a fight-or-flight response in your nervous system — your heart beats faster, muscles contract and adrenaline pumps. But gratitude can help calm the nervous system.

Taking a moment to be thankful causes physiological changes in your body that initiate the parasympathetic nervous system — the part of your nervous system that helps you rest and digest. Gratitude and the response it causes help bring down your blood pressure, heart rate and breathing to help with overall relaxation.

Improve sleep

People with an attitude of gratitude tend to pursue goals that keep them feeling good — a positive attitude promotes positive action. They engage in activities that support healthy sleep, such as eating well and exercising regularly. Practicing gratitude also makes you less likely to be stressed, anxious or depressed — three factors that affect sleep quality and duration.

But what you do during the day isn’t the only factor in sleeping well. Thinking positive thoughts before falling asleep promotes better sleep — and there’s evidence that gratitude causes people to have positive thoughts about their life, social support and social situations.

Source: uclahealth.org

May is national pet month, below is a list of the most popular pets in 2025. The list may surprise you!

Pets can come in all different shapes and sizes. According to Forbes, here are the most popular ones in the United States in 2025...

Saltwater fish - Number of U.S. households (millions): 2.2M
Horse - Number of U.S. households (millions): 2.2M
Reptile - Number of U.S. households (millions): 6M
Bird - Number of U.S. households (millions): 6.1M
Small animal (like Hamsters, gerbils, rabbits, guinea pigs, ferrets, etc.) - Number of U.S. households (millions): 6.7M
Freshwater fish - Number of U.S. households (millions): 11.1M
Cat - Number of U.S. households (millions): 46.5M
Dog - Number of U.S. households (millions): 65.1M

Need pet insurance? Call Lallis & Higgins Insurance.

Source: yahoo.com