Children drowning on holiday.

Completely agree with you, pondering. It's a huge pain and not worth living near a lake/pond/ swimming pool with small kids.

We live abroad and a lot of people have pools.

We don't, because:

When the kids were young it would have been constant surveillance, and telling them not to go in, but they would anyway, and

If you have a pool you're a lifeguard, which includes lifeguarding for any of their friends coming over. You are 100% responsible, all the time.

Completely agreed

People on holiday are in holiday vibe mode. It's as if it's pre kids. It's not.

So they think they can relax and chill. You can't with a toddler. It is literally 24/7.

My heart goes out to those poor parents but 100%, more awareness raising is needed

My parents moved to a house on a lake house once I became an adult. When we would visit when dd was young, children were in life jackets whenever we went outside. An adult always stood between the children and the water like a lifeguard. It was a giant pain.

when we were looking for our current house, one with a large pond was an option. We still walk by it from our current home, but there was no chance we were going to live there.

It's very frightening how fast things can happen. I'm just back from hols and there were two pool related incidents with children. One child needed hospital treatment. On our last day a young girl (6/7) was trying to bring her little brother (2 at most) into the big pool. Both had swim vests on so obviously little girl couldnt swim herself. The lifeguard stopped her and told her she would need a parent present in the pool. Two irate parents appeared saying they didn't feel like swimming and would watch from the sunbeds. Lifeguard was having none of it and told them you can't expect a child to be responsible for a small baby. The parents were going mad saying their holiday was ruined.

Our local pool requires an adult in arms reach of children under 8. People grumble about how it is unfair to people with more children than parents, but it’s really the necessary level of supervision in the water.

im always shocked when I go on holiday and see adults lounging on chairs while their young children are in the water. We always shadowed dd. Pool or beach holidays aren’t supposed
to be relaxing when you have young children. If you aren’t exhausted by the end of the day, you are doing it wrong

They don’t have adults in the pool at any swimming lessons I know of (not taking about toddlers obviously).

I remember when DD was about three, we were walking along the beach and she was walking through pools in the sand. One was a bit deeper than she thought (although still well below her waist) and she fell. I was standing right by her, but what shocked me was she made no effort to stand up - just lay under the water until I waded in and pulled her out. I still don't know what had happened if I hadn't got to her in seconds, but I always think of this when I see the adverts for "drowning doesn't look like drowning" as she made no effort to struggle or help herself.

What about people who grow up next to the sea, lakes and rivers, they can't be fenced off

Yes, indeed. I remember hearing about little Lane Graves his name was. The poor thing.
I’d paddled in the Seven Seas Lagoon, on the Grand Floridian beach myself plenty of times previously. I always told myself that alligators are there, but they remove anything big enough to harm a human. I can’t imagine the horror his parents went through.

Fortunately when DS got lost, we were actually inside the Magic Kingdom, in the Tomorrowland area…but there are still plenty of areas of water in that park.

France has very strict laws relating to pool safety. Fences, alarms, reinforced covers etc.

I honestly think it's an illusion that increased personal responsibility on the part of parents can solve the problem. Human beings are not good at weighing risks, even when they know the facts. We often take our cue about risk from what others do, and we are especially poor at weighing risks if we have competing concerns. Look at all the stories about avoidable tragedies and near misses on this thread. Yes individuals can sometimes do better and might be influenced by new information (eg silent drowning) but I think the answer has to be a mandated cultural shift in what is ok. That's how we've reduced drink driving over the past few decades.

How about legislation to mandate things like - fenced private pools, fencing between deep and shallow sections of public pools, life guards required for pools of a certain size, no alcohol by children's pools, commercial pool settings required to implement a system for tracking the responsible adult for each child, no children allowed in hotel rooms leading directly to a pool, public info films about silent drowning... I'm sure there are other things that could be done too. Hotels wouldn't all implement this without legislation as they'd worry about losing custom.

I know that means a nanny state, but sometimes we need one!

No, most of the posters have been sharing their near misses, experiences and knowledge. I've never seen someone drown, I wasn't aware until I read this thread that it was silent.

This happened to me. When I was around 4. I had my cork floating device around my waist. I breathed in and it got undone. I went from horizontal to vertical and all I can remember was my only my lips above the water. And I started to sink. Couldn´t scream. A young teen was a couple metres away from me grabbed me by my arm and pulled me up as my mum was running towards us. She never read or drank anything or got engaged in coversation, but sat on the grass facing us, so that delayed her. I sit on the edge of the pool with my feet in when DD is swimming and I am not, precisely because of this.

I had an incident with my daughter when she was 4 too. We showered to get the sand off and she was right behind me and I was still talking to her when I was rinsing the bucket and spade, I asked something, she didn´t answer so I looked back and she had jumped into the pool and forgot to put her floating device on. Luckily she had been to enough swimming lessons to have enough wits about to her to quickly float/doggy style swim to the edge and hang on. My heart went into my mouth. OP this can happen to the most careful parent in the world, it is silent and quick.
Just to add: I now have a rule with DD, she´s 6. Before she ever gets into the pool she has to make sure I am looking straight at her and give her a nod. She always does.

I don’t have kids and if I’m by a pool/lake whatever and see kids in without an adult I then feel I’m responsible for them and it pisses me off when I just want to do my own thing

RedhairDL you have reminded me of a trip to Alnwick Castle Gardens when DC was two and slipped off when we glanced away. There is a whole cascade of ponds there - I was terrified for those five loooong minutes it took to find him.

Though there is an additional danger with water at Disney world Florida:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40855910

Taking it VERY seriously is what matters.

When our two were kids we always had a responsibility for one or the other. On planes we had a definite agreement that in case of emergency which one was ‘ours’. It was also agreed there was no looking back to assist in an evac situation. Luckily nothing ever happened like that.

The method we used for overseeing both of them was simply a charity type wrist band. Band on wrist = meerkat. No excuses.

They’ve now got their own to look after and yes, unfortunately the dads are the ones who fail to take it seriously. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” Is their mantra.

I’m guessing we all know our spouses well enough though…

Agreed, because in spite of what posters are saying, it's not just luck that keeps children safe.

If you eliminate 9/10 chances for your child to drown, then you only have to be lucky once. If you only eliminate 5/10 chances, then you have to be lucky five times.

I think it's hard because everyone has a different idea of what an acceptable level of risk looks like. For example, I'd never take both my young children swimming alone.

It's great that you could jump in to save your 4 year old, when they were in trouble, but what if something had happened to your other child at the same time?

There will be other parents that think the chance of something happening to two children, separately but at the same time, is so small it's worth the risk for a pool holiday. In the same way that other parents will think the risk of something happening in a group, or whilst they nip to the loo, or read their book (etc.) is small enough to ignore.

Nobody is stopping anyone discussing pool safety.

What some of us are objecting to is the

"OMG a child has died, here's all the reasons I'm better than those parents and it won't happen to mine"

Or

"Well I'm just going to say it, the parents were negligent/drinking/at fault somehow"

Why can't pool safety be discussed without bringing someone else's tragedy into it?

Water is so dangerous for people who can't swim and it's even more terrifying how these things can happen when you are being a full on parent. When my eldest was 3 he suddenly ran off and disappeared which had never happened before. I had his brother with me who was a baby and not walking so even though I ran right after him I wasn't quick enough to see where he went. We live near a river and also somewhere where there is a pond so he could easily have made it there and fallen in. Luckily for us he didn't but it easily shows how these things happen even when you are watching them.

On holiday I made sure we knew who was responsible for the kids in the pool and if we needed to swap it was clear that x was now in charge because it's so easy to think someone else is watching them.

I would never have a pond in the garden with young children and if I had any kind of swimming pool it would be fenced or in a separate building with an alarm so you knew when the door was left open/unlocked.

Teenagers are another story, mine are still too young to be going off with their friends but I have discussed with them how dangerous water can be and not to swim in rivers/quarries but once they reach late teens that will be out of my control and in theirs and it's up to them to be sensible. Doesn't help my worry that they are boys and statistically more likely to do something stupid and kill themselves!!

Utterly heartbreaking. But I wonder if both parents thought the child was with the other, or something like that.

I remember being in Disney World when DS was three. I was looking around a shop and DH had hold of our son. Apparently they’d walked to the end of the aisle I was in and my son had said “mummy” and run towards me so my husband thought he’d come straight to me. My husband didn’t follow him because I was within about 2 metres.

Meanwhile, my attention was on some T shirts and I didn’t know my son was behind me. I walked away from the T-shirts and into the next aisle where I saw DH was without our son. Immediately I panicked and DH ran into the next aisle to look for him, but he wasn’t there.

The Disney cast members quickly went into action, radioing security, asking me for a photo, they closed down the shop, we were looking around it, they alerted other cast members. My heart was in my stomach. DH was running about outside the store now, looking everywhere he could think of.

Then suddenly I hear a little giggle and I turn to the T-shirt aisle and see my son poking his head out of a hanging rack of towels. He had been right next to me. He had tucked himself under the towels and out of sight.

It had taken a split second to ‘lose’ him. It shocked me. We went straight to Walmart and bought reins for him.

Fortunately for us we could all laugh about it. But many are not so lucky and it can end in tragedy - not necessarily people being negligent. Just awful, awful, circumstances. So I try not to judge.

Exactly. If now isn't the time to discuss pool safety, when is? If you discuss it at any other time, people will get defensive and dismiss it as hysteria. It's much more difficult to remain in denial if a child has recently drowned.

Aside From the fact that toddlers can drown in an inches of water, most people don’t know what drowning looks like. They think it involves lots of splashing and maybe shouting. Drowning is silent:

I think the Emilie Kiser case, whilst tragic, is a little bit different and that’s why she’s receiving so much of a response, because it was active negligence: pool fencing is a legal requirement in Arizona, they’d been advised as much by their pool installer, warned by their HOA that they were in breach several times, and seen (and deleted) thousands of comments from their social media where followers had told them the same. Regardless of the circumstances of how their child drowned and whether it was a freak accident, they made a decision not to comply with the law. They’re paying an enormous price for it, though, and I really hope it jolts other families with home pools to fence them.

A family who’ve booked a villa with a pool for a holiday and then lose a child because of a perfect storm where both parents thought the other was watching the child and didn’t realise they’d let themselves outside or whatever could happen to pretty much anyone.

When they are little it's swim aids and close supervision which is important not actual swimming ability. 5+ they pick up swimming quickly in lessons usually and then you needn't pay for so many.