When my DD18 was maybe three, she thought it would be fun to hide in the clothing racks at Kohls. She was always next to me, but decided that day to play hide and seek. The panic and terror I felt for those 10 seconds (she came right out) cannot even be described. I can still feel it in my soul.
I was another mom who never trusted anyone to watch her kid at the pool. At a Girl Scout event, where they rented out a hotel swimming pool, I couldn’t believe I was the only mom who went. The only adults were the scout leaders, who, to be honest, were not interested in lifeguarding. This was in early middle school - she could swim, but not well. I also sat poolside with my legs in the water while my toddler kids swam at the pool within a couple feet of me.
The lifeguards at our pool are well-trained, and I’ve seen more than one dive in for a kid with the parents right there sunbathing. Several years ago my kids were taking a Red Cross swimming class at my mother’s house, and the mom next to me all of a sudden dove in - cell phone and all - and grabbed her kid. With a bunch of Red Cross-certified instructors around, her kid ran into trouble while swimming a lap and no one noticed.
Tragic. I would never have a pool in my backyard nor would I live within a 2 or 3 minute walk to another water source. I do live and raised my kids in a beach community within walking distance (7-8 minutes) to a private freshwater pond that we used for night swimming, boating, fishing. When D was an infant her Dad and I did some preliminary house shopping and he was insisting on an inground pool. Never materialized into a marriage or home co-owners so a non-issue. My parents have an inground pool and once they put it in I never allowed my kids to sleep over there again until they were school aged. They were very relaxed about the supervision, yikes!
I don’t see any reference here to teaching toddlers how to swim. I would imagine that’s the number one safety move you could make. Both my kids could stay afloat by age two and swim a short distance (side to side in a pool) by three and the long distance of a pool by four. They were also diving down to pick up objects of the pool bottom around that age. They were always supervised by an adult at pools and the beach until they earned junior lifesaving certificates at the local Y in middle school, probably around 10? – that was my parameter for going swimming without an adult, but always with a buddy.
My kids took Red Cross swimming lessons at summer camp starting when they were 3. I never believed in training kids who wore diapers to swim, but mine were never in the “big pool” before that age. There was a “baby pool” at our town pool and I used to sit in there with my little ones. Although I live in an area where many people (in nicer neighborhoods) have pools, we were never friends with any of them so we were not generally invited over.
I think it’s wonderful that in the 20 plus years we have lived here, nobody has drowned in the town pool.
I cannot begin to imagine the heartache that this family is enduring and will continue to endure. It can be so hard to accord yourself grace, but I hope they do. I know as a parent, sometimes my flawed decision-making or just life brought us moments of “wow, can’t believe that just happened.”
Adding to the stories of near misses, I swam competitively; my kids had swimming lessons, swim team, capable, etc, and we were at our local swim club pretty much everyday. As I was sitting with my friends, I happened to look in the deeper end (~7 feet) and saw my 8-year old son, bobbing from the bottom to the top, head back, barely breaking the water. Hoping I wasn’t going to get dinged for ruining a Marco Polo game, I jumped in, clothes and all. After getting him out, heart normalized (mine), he shared that he didn’t feel well while he was in the shallow end, decided to swim over rather than get out. Lifeguard never saw him. Colored my world.
As an aside, where were all of you wonderful parents when my kids were the only ones with life vests on at the Jersey Shore:)?
While swimming lessons do exist for babies and toddlers in attempts to “swim proof” it’s important to know that it’s not necessarily a “forever” thing. Small kids even after such training can forget how to swim and need to be re-taught at a later age.
“svlab: Mom of three here—all 2 years apart. I and others would describe me as hyoer-vigilant. Yet, as toddlers, I certainly had the rare moment one would wander off when I was distracted with another and once near the Truckee River. Makes me sick 20 years later.”
Hyper-vigilant here too. Crazy smart toddler one time still managed escaped from her room during nap time, slip into the sun room unheard, and create a work of engineering with chairs and tables in order to disengage a ceiling height complicated lock on a door to facilitate escape when one parent took a short nap while the other ran to the store. A neighbor brought her back.
A friend had 5 toddler boys at one point. At church, one managed to elude all adults including those on the doors and get half a mile away on a busy road near the highway before anyone caught him.
So a one time accident can happen to anyone, even the hyper-vigilant, as you say.
So it seems a bit unfair to ponder, as initial post does, “when will parents ever learn not to leave children unattended near water”? It does not sound like this child was left near water. She just slipped away in an instant.
“It happened around 6:30 in the evening on Saturday night,” Orange County Fire Authority Captain Steve Concialdi told PEOPLE. “They were at a neighbor’s house, talking to the neighbors inside, and somehow the little girl made her way to the backyard pool.”
“She was only missing for just a short amount of time and Mom turned and was looking for her and didn’t see her right next to her,” he continued. “Mom went straight to the backyard to where the pool was. The child was in the pool. The mom pulled out the little girl and they started CPR immediately.”
Being hyper vigilant was exhausting and not at all fun. Those who endured pool parties while never chit chatting with other adults… never taking their eyes off their kid know what I mean. I really appreciated other hyper vigilant parents.
There was this one mom I knew who I never really liked …she was snooty and cliquey. But I supervised a kids field trip in preschool to a big park with her and when one of her friends tried to talk with her she said “ Sorry I can’t talk now I’m watching the kids and that street is too close for my comfort.” She never took her eyes off her group of kids. She was one of those moms who signed up for every field trip and when I wasn’t going I asked her if she take my kid in her group. I didn’t like her…but I loved her if you knew what I mean.
I really appreciated the article about what drowning actually looks like and how silent and quick it can be.
Even if adults are supervising and vigilant they may not realize that a kid is in trouble. It should be required reading.
What you should probably be focused on at a pool is the water and underneath–not necessarily just trying to count heads and the noisy play.
@momo2x2018 If your heart goes out to these people, then don’t start off with “when will people learn?” And the GoFundme. So don’t donate.
My youngest has a bunch of issues that are a puzzle. She is NOT on the spectrum, yet so many behaviors are similar. One is that she is Houdini. We fortunately live at the end of a Cul-de-sac, because many many ones when she was between 2-3 I would notice an unnatural quiet, and look out the front window and see her tearing around on her bike (she was oddly coordinated and rode well and fast very early) Occasions I would get a phone call “Did you know Anna is outside with a doll carriage, barefoot?” -in the winter. At nighttime. In a nightgown.
Then my neighbors took down the fence around their yard. They have a pool. When I called after being tormented by it for weeks, she asked me if I knew how much fences cost, and was I offering to put one in for her? and slammed the phone down.
So we fenced OUR yard. But she still got out to the front - and they had no fence, so she could still get to the pool. For some reason, she never tried. But really- you just can’t say you never ever lost track of your kid for a couple of mjnutes. She could disappear in the timenit took to thrownjn a load of laundry. Also, her most recent admission to the hospital from the ER was 1 ER visit, X-rays, bloodwork, and two days of observation and fluids - we paid $1800 but the bill was for $27K. That was a simple thing. They may have done all kinds of things to this baby if she wasn’t DOA. Or maybe even if she was. And the funeral.
Maybe the Millers don’t need it. Maybe it is a well-intentioned friend, and they don’t tealky want it, or know about it. who knows? It is sad all around. But there but for the grace of god go I.
Certainly every parent has lost sight of a kid long enough for a drowning or other tragedy to take place. Most of us were lucky. Some kids in my family were Houdini also, and escaped constraints that were more elaborate than you can believe.
Pool owners have the responsibility to prevent access to their pools, we may eventually find the details of what happened here, and the answer may be anything from gross negligence to an improbable sequence of failures of well-designed safety protocols. A tragedy no matter what.
Another learning from CC is that the saying “there but for the grace of God go I” often unintentionally offends. And probably should. Why did God grace you and not me? is the question is raises.
The GoFundMe is odd. People sometimes start those because they either want to help, or want to be seen to be helping, or want to raid the money for personal gain.
“As an aside, where were all of you wonderful parents when my kids were the only ones with life vests on at the Jersey Shore:)?”
In Florida. It’s not unusual to see kids in PFDs here - beach, docks, rivers. I made my boys wear one any time we were at a social event near water until they were about 10 years old. The oldest was fine with it but the youngest would sometimes push back, until he saw a near drowning. After that, he was the first to put his PFD on.
Youngest son (8 yo) and I had taken our power boat down to watch a paddle board race in the bay. An hour after the race had ended, we were boating home and noticed a big, fit looking man on a paddle board fall off. He still had his paddle and the water wasn’t rough, so there was no reason to assume he was in danger. He bobbed up and after a bit, tried to use his paddle to grab the board and pull it to him. Unfortunately, he only managed to push it further away. His PFD was nicely attached - to the board which was now floating away. It seemed odd that he wasn’t swimming towards the board. But he wasn’t calling for help or splashing. When he started to sink down, then push back up when he got to the bottom about 8-9 feet below, take a huge breath and sink again, I realized he was in trouble, so drove over quickly. He was able to grab the throwable float we tossed him, but couldn’t grab a line or climb at all. I’m small and he was at least 6’1", 200+, so I could only drag him up onto the swim platform but not over the stern into the boat. He was a very strange grey, purple color all over but was breathing and conscious. After a few minutes, he was able to push with his feet/legs and I pulled under his shoulders to drag him over the stern into the bottom of the boat so we could get back to shore.
The paddle boarded was OK, but my son was totally traumatized. He still talks about the “purple” man and is always the first to put on his PFD now.
Both pool owners and parents are responsible. We have a high fence around our yard as is required when one has a pool here. But a Houdini like child could conceivably climb over it. That type of behavior cannot be blamed on the pool owner.
Since I had twins we weren’t around water much as toddlers/preschoolers because there wasn’t much opportunity to have two dedicated people to be with them. They had the usual kid lessons starting at age 4 or 5 but the single best thing I did was put them on swim team at 6. About 4 weeks in to the daily practices and they were swimming like fish and I didn’t have to worry about them again.
We have a backyard pool. Fenced, covered, and didn’t move here until my youngest was 5 (and he’d been in swimming lessons for years by that point). He’s now 13 and I’m finally starting to relax about being outside all of the time when he and the 16 year old are in the pool together without a parent.
We had a pool party for some elementary kids one summer. I think they were mostly between 1st and 2nd grade at the time, or it might have been the following year. I made it clear on the invitation that it wasn’t a dropoff party, but still had one mom drop her daughter off. And then it turned out that of the kids who were there, guess which kid was the only one who couldn’t swim. I’m still baffled at that, years later.
“But really- you just can’t say you never ever lost track of your kid for a couple of mjnutes. She could disappear in the timenit took to thrownjn a load of laundry”
That’s the thing. I didn’t even throw in a load of laundry when my kids were little without them by my side. That’s why I can indeed say I never lost track of them even for a couple of minutes. At least not at the age Miller’s daughter was. But that’s also why I found those years so tiresome
“That type of behavior cannot be blamed on the pool owner.”
Yeah, that’s another issue here in Florida. There is water everywhere. It’s rare to be more than 2-3 minutes from a lake, river, beach, ditch, pool, large puddle. I don’t disagree with the idea that pool owners need a fence, but there is so much water around some of the pool fence rules are a little silly. We don’t have a pool, but both our neighbors do. They both have the required fence around their pool but it seems really silly since each of our homes sits on 150’ of seawall that drops directly into the bay. Yes, a child wouldn’t drown in the pool but could even more easily drown 10’ - 20’ away in the bay…