Does lifeguard have power to ban my son from community pool?
Q: My rental complex has a swimming pool with lifeguards where my kids spend much of their summer hanging out. The other day my 10 year old son told me that he’d been kicked out of the pool and couldn’t come back for the rest of the week. I talked to the lifeguard, who told me that my son has been bullying another child, and they’ve talked to him about it before. He said my son could come back to the pool next week, but if the bullying continues he would be banned from the pool for the rest of the summer. My son is a good boy and told me that the other boy started the dispute. Does the lifeguard have the power to ban my son from using the pool?
A: In operating a swimming pool for tenants and their children, landlords have to follow and enforce certain rules, which they do through the lifeguards. Some rules are laid out by the Public Health Department, such as rules against swimming with open sores, or children being toilet trained. There are also safety rules like no glass containers and no running on the pool side, and there are rules about public decency, like wearing swim suits.
As well, there are safety and behavioural rules that the lifeguards will enforce, especially among children who use the pool. Things like no jumping on other kids (in the water or out), no diving in the shallow end (or at all), not splashing people who do not want to be splashed, not interfering with lap lanes and not bothering other swimmers. Just like at a public pool, the lifeguards will usually begin by talking to the children who are misbehaving, and then progress to making them stand out of the pool (perhaps against a wall) for specific periods of time, like 5, 10 or 15 minutes, which the lifeguards time.
Most kids get the message and behave most of the time, so that they may spend some time on the wall instead of in the pool, but they settle down and are allowed back into the pool.
Presuming the lifeguard has followed the usual approach, it sounds like your son did not get the message. Rather than thinking about the legal rights involved, you would be better to talk to the lifeguard about what your son has been doing, and address the issue with your son yourself. Even better, go with your son, or send a responsible adult, to observe his behaviour for several days. Be aware that your child may be better behaved when you are there than when he is on his own.
In terms of the legal rights, your lease may give the landlord the right to make rules. Sometimes a set of rules is actually spelled out in the lease. Even if the lease is silent on the question of rules, the right to make reasonable rules for the use of the swimming pool is implied. The landlord has an obligation to make sure all tenants and unit occupants do not suffer interference with their reasonable enjoyment of the facilities by other tenants or occupants, such as your son. As long as the rules are enforced in a reasonable and consistent way, the judgment of the lifeguards is unlikely to be found inappropriate.
Realistically, the odd accidental interference will happen and will be overlooked, but persistent interference with the enjoyment of others is a justifiable reason for the landlord or their lifeguards to take action.