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Children love swimming pools. They love to get wet. They love to splash. They love to play and frolic, to swim and dive, to hold their breath and to jump around in the water. A swimming pool is about the most useful "toy" you can provide for your children.

Parents love swimming pools, too. It brings the kids outside in the fresh air. It is a great time to bond as a family...and one of the few ways to do so as kids become pre-teens. It gives one's children exercise - much more so than watching TV or playing video games all day. A swimming pool is great for the kids (and the parents don't mind the fresh air and soothing water on their own bodies, either).

But water is dangerous, and every year 750 American children 14 years old and younger drown, many in backyard swimming pools, and another 4000 are severely enough injured that they need to be hospitalized. Pool safety is serious business.

The first and most obvious pool safety tip for kids is to make sure you have a solid pool fence installed, to keep young neighbourhood children - including your own - from wandering into the pool unattended. That is how most swimming pool drownings happen. You can build one yourself if you know what you're doing, but you might want to call a fence contractor to make sure the fence is build strong and solid. Use gates that self-close and self-latch, with latches higher than your children's reach, and make sure the fence is at least four feet high.

Here are a few mote top tips and tactics to keep your kids safe in the swimming pool this summer...

Never leave children alone. Drowning takes just a couple minutes, and it can - and often does - happen while parents step away from the pool "for just a moment".

Practice a strategy called "touch supervision" to ensure your youngsters under five years of age are safe. This is a very simple tactic. The parent just keeps very close to the child - close enough that you can touch him at any moment - that you can reach out and grab him if something should happen. By five years old, the child might be a much better swimmer, but you might want to continue this strategy for a while longer.

Invest in swimming lessons for your children. Once they start swimming, "touch supervision" will no longer be needed. Let professionals who are expert in swimming techniques and in water safety train your kids to be water safety pros themselves. The skills they learn at swimming lessons might save their lives right away or many years in the future.

Life saving equipment should be kept close by the pool - right on the deck - where you can reach them in an emergency Don't let anyone play with them or move them from where you know they should be. In an emergency, there will not be a second to spare. You don't want your child to drown while you run around looking for the equipment that would save her life.

Make sure any electrical appliance or device is protected by a ground fault circuit interrupter, in case they come in contact with the water. Kids are playful Kids are absent-minded. Kids knock things over. Best to keep radios and other electrical equipment far away from the water and far away from where they can be accidentally knocked into the water.

Make sure your pool deck has a non-slip surface. That will make it less likely that there will be a fall-related accident (Yes, they do happen frequently - kids love to run, even if you tell them not to).

So you've installed your pool, and you are ready to build the deck. Call your pool fence builder to build the fence and also the deck, so that it is also strong and sturdy. Finally, one last little tip...

Have a blast!