Q. Should I teach my 2-year-old to swim? The American Academy of Pediatrics says to wait till age 4, as before then kids are generally not developmentally ready for formal swimming lessons.

A. Kids less than a year old mostly drown in bathtubs, so it's 1- to 4-year-olds who are more at risk of drowning. Toddlers drown at a higher rate than teens, mostly in home pools. Those 12 to 24 months old drown at the highest rate: One in 24,000 children in that age range drown each year.

However, the mantra has been that it's never been shown that early lessons reduce drowning, and lessons may give both kids and parents a false sense of safety, making parents more lax at supervising their keiki at pools and beaches.

Well, hot off the presses: In a study announced March 2 by the American Medical Association in its Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, Dr. Ruth Brenner and others found that 26 percent of 1- to 4-year-olds in various counties in Maryland, North Carolina, Florida, California, Texas and New York had had formal swimming lessons, but among the children who had drowned, only 3 percent had been taught to swim. That means swimming lessons seemed to reduce drowning risk 88 percent in 1- to 4-year-olds.

Due to the small size of the study, the 88-percent figure is not exact, and the risk of drowning may really have been reduced by anywhere from 3 percent to 99 percent. Another study, done in rural China by Dr. Li Yang and others, confirmed that swimming lessons reduced drowning 40 percent in 1- to 4-year-olds.

Noting that drowning killed 186,000 children and teens globally in 2002, Dr. Frederick Rivara in an editorial entitled "The Time Is Now" wrote that formal swimming lessons could make a real difference worldwide "to prevent the sound of happy children splashing in water from turning into the wail of an ambulance siren or the sound of a parent crying in grief."

Rivara reminds us that lessons should not replace safety measures such as pool fencing, personal flotation devices, supervised swim areas and constant adult supervision, as many of the kids who drowned in the study were good swimmers. Pools or spas need to be completely fenced in, and also prevent access through the home. Get an ornamental iron fence at least 5 feet tall, with vertical bars 3.25 inches apart, and with a self-closing, self-latching gate with latches mounted near the top.

Because the recession has reduced construction costs and summer is barely three months away, the time is indeed now to build or replace that fence ... and look for swimming classes.