Mother watches 6-month-old baby fall into a pool and cheers her on

If parents told you they were letting a 6-month-old baby fall into a pool and leaving her you’d probably call child services.

But that’s exactly what a mother did in a video circulating on Facebook, with some saying it’s an awful thing to do to a child so young and others praising it as a worthy safety measure.

The 2-minute video, which was uploaded May 2 by a user called Dov and has been viewed more than 820,000 times as of Tuesday morning, shows a 6-month-old baby girl struggling to reach for her sandal. She eventually falls into the pool and instead of helping her, adults nearby watch as she turns herself around to float on her back.

The baby girl whines softly, clearly uncomfortable, but stays on her back without going underwater for the entire video before the woman shooting the video picks her up, saying “I’ve got you, baby.”

The video is captioned, “So hard to watch but every kid should learn this young!”

And the mother, identified as Keri Morrison, of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, has every reason to make sure her baby has learned. She previously lost a son in 2013, who was 2 1/2 years old at the time. He fell off a dock in Orlando and drowned.

Now Morrison and her husband are advocates for the Infant Swimming Resource Self-Rescue technique, a method for teaching babies to float — not swim — on their own. They have another daughter who learned the technique at 8 months old.

Facebook users were divided on the video, with some calling it a worthy lesson to teach children to keep them safe and others saying it was cruel.

“Child was not in any danger. There were obviously adults around and the baby was doing well,” one user wrote. “Great parenting. Showing others how this teaching can save lives.”

“A baby has zero reason to learn anything about the water at that age. They can barely control their limbs. Its the parents duty at that age to watch them like a hawk,” another user wrote. “A baby should NEVER be by or in a body of water without adults, period. So this is just not that well thought out.”

This story was originally published May 10, 2016 at 8:57 AM with the headline "Mother watches 6-month-old baby fall into a pool and cheers her on."