Water should really be considered such a hazard for anyone under fives. Baths, buckets, fish ponds, lakes near playgrounds. A swimming pool is such a thing that needs to be taken seriously, I suspect on holidays if someone has one in their villa or airbnb backyard they might just not be used to it and don't think about how easily a child could just slip out side and wander over. Even for home-owners, the anxiety I would have around one, even fully fenced until they're at least 7 would be intense.
Ages 5-10 is hard, because they can seem so confident, but they also can panic easily, tire out easily, make questionable choices and all the sorts. It's just such an awful risk. But also, one needs to learn how to swim and I really do question the over use of floaties, paddlejumpers and even lifejackets if it is holding back the increased skill of swimming. I think the problem is how one defines "swimming" is hard.
A news stories might say "a child drowned while swimming in the sea", but the details might be they were wading up to their knees then a rouge wave hit them, and washed them out. Well, I'd hardly say they were swimming before that. So circumstance and context is so important.
Also the main issue of drowning being so damn silent. No screaming or flailing, be it so simple. Or the assumption that a hotel pool has a lifeguard, and that lifeguards themselves are babysitters (I don't like that mindset).
I am more forgiving than most on news stories when a children is 10+ drowns, I don't like jumping to the "where are the parents??" style comments one often sees as a first gut reaction. Anyone who really thinks about preteen and teenage behaviour knows that very easily they could go to a lake, river or friend's pool without a parent really being in the loop on such a thing. And while it's easy to be a perfect parent online, real life is much harder. If you have a child who is 11 or 12, who is a perfectly fantastic swimmer and has never shown a sense of fault in their life. Then while letting them going to swim in a backyard pool or hotel pool without supervision while might at be to many ill-advised on paper, we need to be real here and admit it's more normal than people might like to admit (and many would never admit letting it happen). Pretending it isn't helpful.
I'm not endorsing it, but just how a child walking to school can be kidnapped, or a horse rider can fall off and snap their neck, things can happen in any scenario and compassion is always required. I don't like the victim blaming of parents who let their kids walk to school acting as if they did something wrong, same with an preteen or teenager in a pool. Reality often doesn't align with perfect, and we must still show compassion when something goes wrong, not just instantly blame and say it was inevitable, when perhaps they swam 99 times before without an issue and it wasn't really fair to call it inevitable. Often when you look into these stories when it comes to pools it really come down to one of three scenarios.
- The child frankly couldn't swim and lacked ability.
- A shallow water blackout, a terrible thing that affects sadly strong swimmers.
- A medical episode, such as a seizure.
- A total freak accident, ala hair getting caught in a pool drain or the like.
Education is key, ensuring children themselves understand specific hazards is key. Saying to a preteen "you might drown" is pointless, better to teach of hyper specific hazards, such as the dangers of breath holding and shallow water blackout, currents, rip-tides, cold water shock, spinal injuries etc. Not to scare them, but to make them understand all the things that can go wrong, to respect the water and its power.
The other uncomfortable one was that someone else could drag them under if they begin to panic, or even if the child was acting the hero (as is a normal gut react, to help). Drowning doesn't just happen, there's always a reason. A healthy preteen who is a good swimmer won't just randomly drown in a pool out of nowhere, there's always a reason for it.
And for many, that reason is enough to always watch them, but I can perfectly understand those more loose as well and I honestly cannot judge them, at the end of the day, these can be truly freak accidents.
For my part, I simply followed the pool rules at the location. If it said nobody under 12 without a parent, then that was that, no matter if I thought my son was fine at 11, I allowed the sign be my backup there. Mercifully I didn't come across many pools that said 10.
Although my irrational fear was more an adult of ill-intention targeting him because he liked to wear speedos. My son wanted to wear speedos swimming, I let him. It's his choice and that's fantastic, I'd never wish to victim blame him no more than a girl in a bikini. A child child should be allowed to express. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't more willing to go with him at a hotel pool, not because I thought he'd drown, but because a fear someone might see him alone and chat him up. But then I could never judge another who didn't have these fears and wasn't thinking down those lines.
Bottom line is, for older children who drown in pools. Have compassion to them and their parents.