My kid went in the river today

[Rmdddjb]

my kid is 11 and wants to be independent and go to playground or walks by himself and not be stuck indoors all the time, so I told him to bring his phone and water and wear a hat and sunglasses . I use my phone to contact him and track his whereabouts. So 5 min later I go outside and start stalking him. It’s so hard to see anything on the screen in the sun anyway but I do my best. I told him to go to playground nearby but his tracker showed me he was moving around everywhere! He wasn’t in the playground and 30 min later I found him walking home on the field. He was soaking wet! We live next to a river and he told me he went in there!!! Like wtf?! What brought that on?! He said cuz his friend told him that he had gone in there too once. So he wanted to try it too.

I was mortified!! He said there was a woman that told him Good luck when he jumped in and just walked off. Then there was a group that walked past and one of the guys pulled my son up from the river and I’m eternally grateful that he did when others just ignored him. If it wasn’t for him my kid would probably not be here.

this is the last time I’ll let my kid go out on his own. Even if I have the tracker on him. I just told him he’s not allowed to go on his own anymore. He has friends but they live in different towns but go same school.

he’s very sad that he doesn’t have friends in the neighbourhood because nobody wants to play with him anyway ( he’s always the lonely guy in the playground and I’ve tried setting up play dates with his class mates but the parents don’t want to and just ignore my texts), and I understand that he wants to find someone to play with.

Biut the trust for me is gone. I can’t let him have his independence anymore, i have to watch him like a hawk if I so have to run out after him with poop hanging down my pants ( he sometimes goes out when I sit in the toilet without telling me) . Sorry but I had to vent. I don’t expect any replies.

If you mean the benefits of open water swimming then I've been swimming in the sea nearly every day for nearly four decades now. My father was a swimming teacher, life saving instructor and RNLI volunteer.

Nobody feels the benefits of open water swimming more than me.

My sole aim of being on this post was to highlight the risks to other parents in the hope that more people will take that seriously.

Belittling the dangers risks childrens' lives.

Great ideas

If you go in water at UK temperatures then that will always cause CWS, it can't be avoided. So if CWS isn't allowed then nobody can swim in the UK except in a well heated pool. (In fact, more heated than my local pool.) No matter, I've convinced PoF, so I have one convert.

As for the OPs son.... Yeah, non swimmers, fully clothed with mobile phones in their pockets and Backpacks on should not he jumping into rivers, and nobody should jump into water they can't get out of.

PoF who says she was already a fan of cold water swimming? What have you converted her to?

i can see that would be scary for you.

but i do wonder why if you have time to stalk your son, why you couldn’t instead hang out with him, have a bit of an adventure or do something enjoyable together, since you don’t have friends nearby.

my kid is 11, and whilst i am happy with him going to and from specific places i can’t imagine letting roam aimlessly.

If doing something every day for nearly four decades isn't belittling the dangers of doing it I really don't know what is!

You could go round schools and "Look I've got away with this for 40 years and I'm still doing it but the CWS could get me any day now so you should all stop."

Oh dear oh dear.

I don't go in the water every day. I said 'nearly' every day. I know when t not to get in and where not to get in. That's key.

It's not a matter of getting away with it. It's a matter of doing all you need to do to avoid it. The consequences of not 'getting away with it' are grim. I had cold water shock as a child and don't want it again.

I don't go around schools - but my dad did. Informing people of the dangers

Everyone who wants to and is able to should swim in open water. It's amazing.

But seriously, ignoring @BabyGrooverBug 's peculiar stance, everyone should inform themselves and take the risks very seriously before getting in any open water themselves or letting any child get in the water.

I disagree with this Covid was only for a couple of years . Loads of my friends in their 30s can’t swim because they didn’t have lessons . Very few people don’t have lessons now

Over 400 public swimming baths have closed since 2010.
Pools more likely to have been closed in deprived areas.
The number of children who can't swim when they leave primary school has increased to 1 in 3 children to 1 in 4 since covid and is expected to rise.
The figures are even worse in deprived areas

Bigger than recommended class groups mean many children do not learn to swim in school lessons. Private lessons aren't affordable for all.

"Figures released by Sport England show that swimming attainment dropped from 65% in 2018 to 2019 to 53% during the Covid years - that’s 500,000 less children able to swim 25m."

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/swimming-lessons-covid-generation-drowning-37274815

https://blog.swimmingnature.com/swimming-standards-in-britain-why-are-numbers-dropping/

https://www.swimming.org/swimengland/active-lives-children-young-people-survey-2024/

re swimming lessons and covid
it obviously isnt just the technical closure time. So schools mar-sept 2020 and jan -mar 2021. It was the waitlists for places at each stage. Because say my 5yo starting school 2020 the older kids were still stuck in lower stages they were blocking.
Then pools changed all to either lessons or lane swim. Near here you cant free swim after school.
30mins at a time is very inefficient in terms of parental effort getting there and takes literally years..!
crash courses of say 1hr or smaller groups help.
Some local schools tested kods in y3 or y4 or y5 and didnt send those who could already do the 25m. But ones not having out of school lessons will take probably years of school lessons to do the 25m.

We’ve had a crap time
covid
ukraine impacting gas electric
chlorine price increases.
less heating of pools
on holidaypark pre covid you could just queue for the pool perhaps go in for 2 rounds. Now its booked slots so less time in pool.

Cost of foreign holidays has soared plus COL so kids not learning on holiday.
its like 4-5£ for a swim here and some pools thats an hour, can be £10 for a family.

Gosh I didn’t know this . That is interesting .i would have thought more children could swim now than 30 years ago . Really they should be subsidised for those who can’t afford them . They are expensive and it’s such an important skill. More important than some of the crap that’s compulsory at school I would argue

Even pre covid our school only did 7 lessons y3 7 in y4 then some catch up year 6. Obviously not enough.

However could be worse my parents generation i know some who cant swim well now. My mum they only had outdoor pool for lessons. Our primary school apparently had a pool there. Now instead with loads of new houses weve doubled the school size…

As a parent you need to do a risk assessment in your head around the individual child. 11 is young for any child to just be wandering around by themselves, but this is an 11 yr old that tries to elope from school, is impulsive and imitates the actions of others . Jumping in the river fully clothed with his rucksack and phone n hot weather when hes talked about his friend being in the river doesn't sound out of character for him from what you ve said tbh,I'm not sure why you are so baffled by it.
You say he's 'high- functioning' and getting support, does that mean he has been through assessments? Or just he's struggling in school and they are trying to support him?
You need to be pro-active for the child you have in order to get them through the teenage tears as best we can whether they are ND or NT, you seem very passive about this situation but maybe its the shock of what could have happened

11year old and the teen pushing of boundaries starts. Teens are at risk due to this behaviour as their risk brain is not developed . yet the urge for freedom and risk taking is high. So firstly what happened is normal behaviour. He was curious.

Treat it as an opportunity to teach him of the dangers of rivers. There are many dangers- strong currents pulling you under and not being able to get out up a steep bank is another. So many kids die rat heatwave from going into unknown bodies of water.

When we were kids a friend d said let’s all jump in the ringer …1…2….3… only one of us jumped in. Luckily it was only waist deep and not fast. But it’s the kind of thing kids do. Particularly in a heatwave.

All water is warm enough to not give you cold water shock so long as you enter slowly - ice swimming is a thing, after all.

OP - I am all for independence in children but it sounds like your DS is not safe to be unsupervised out and about yet, if he's jumping in rivers when he knows he can't swim. Definitely try to find more hobbies/clubs for him to get him more of a social life but in a way that is appropriately safe for him

I get why you are livid. I do feel sorry for him though :( my heart really goes out to him from what youve described

he has demonstrated he is not yet mature enough to make safe decisions. age is irrelevant; he's not ready yet! Until he can prove it's safe to allow him independence, in my house he'd be given zero.

Glad you asked that @Letsgetonwithit - that's the big question this thread has left me with!

Kids need to be allowed to go places without a parent hovering and knowing everything. Your distrust will teach him to distrust himself. He needs a buddy, though. He needs to do dumb things to learn, but with a group of other wild and wooly children. Your tracking him is unhealthy and you are ensuring he won't tell you much when sht hits the fan. You WANT your kid to tell you when he messes up. You want him to tell you about the creepy man he saw when he was sonewhere he wasn't "supposed" to be. The worst thing you can do as a parent is shut that down. Bad things will happen and he wo t be able yo tell you. You become the person who can't be trusted by him and that so lonely and sad for a kid.

Didn’t he jump in the water with his rucksack? Does that sound like behaviour that is okay or that he can be trusted to be out unsupervised?

If he’s broken his phone then he shouldn’t have a replacement. He could have died and all he’s done is blame some random woman!

@Rmdddjb are you sure he went in of his own free will and wasn't coerced or pushed in?
Do some discussions on the dangers of open water. Could he join the uniformed youth groups or cadets? Might help him to make new friends.

this is a really good point actually. man, it's really hard to be a parent isn't it!!

That’s because it’s not true. I just looked it up. In the UK it’s more like 1/40,000

I really agree @AlexStocks. Risk assessment is a basic life skill and can't be learned if a parent is hovering or supervising all the time. A generation of children are growing up without this. Some have a better instinct some do not and have to learn by their own mistakes. A kid who seems to have this much poor judgment needs to do more risky things not less. I already said upthread someone who is constantly monitored and only has a tiny window of opportunity to control their own lives is going to be more reckless.