Drowning isn’t obvious, but it is fast

I recently attended an all-day outdoor birthday party that nearly turned from summer delight into tragic disaster. Despite there being lots of adults nearby, a guest’s child came moments away from drowning.  I’m still shaken by the event, and I want to share what I learned so this doesn’t happen to you.

Here’s the story: One parent — let’s call her “Beth” — was in the pool helping her 2 1/2 year old tour the shallow end on a floating toy. Simultaneously 3 other kids of various swimming abilities, all roughly 6 years old, swam around the shallow end. There were no other adults near the pool.  When I arrived at the pool’s edge (dragged by a toddler desperate to get in) I saw a boy in the water behind Beth’s back and I remarked aloud to her, “Hey, who’s treading water over there?”. From my brief stint as a teenage lifeguard I remembered how hard it was treading water, and I was surprised to see a six-year old doing it.

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than he sank below the surface, hands waving and clutching silently above his head. In a split-second he had gone from what looked like treading water to drowning.

Beth turned around, let go of her own non-swimming child on the floating toy, and immediately dove to rescue the boy. She pulled him up to the surface, where he coughed out all the water he had inhaled and began to wail (a comforting sound, now that he was breathing again). In the meantime I grabbed her toddler from the floating toy, kept my own toddler out of the water, and alerted the other adults with a yell.

“He must have been holding onto the floaty to start with,” Beth said to me later, when things calmed down. She’s smart as a whip, an alert, responsible mother of two, and a great swimmer. She just couldn’t see him.

We got lucky. He would probably have drowned had I not happened by the side of the pool at that moment and had Beth not reacted so quickly. And had I not spoken aloud we may not have realized that he was, in fact, drowning. I really did think he was treading water, right up to the instant when he suddenly went under.

Coincidentally, a day later a friend sent me this blog post by Mario Vittone: Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning. His story is remarkably similar to what I witnessed, and it explained perfectly what I had seen.

Key takeaways:

1. You must have a capable adult explicitly commit to lifeguarding each child.
2. If you are lifeguarding you must be outside the pool in order to have a view of all activity in the pool. When you’re in the pool you can’t see people who are behind you, under the surface, or obscured by things like floating toys.
3. A child that appears to be treading water may actually be drowning.
4. Drowning doesn’t look like anything like the way it’s portrayed in movies. For instance, drowning people:
   1. are unable to call out for help because they are too busy trying to get a breath
   2. can’t wave their arms for help because they are too busy trying to pull themselves above the water’s surface

Mario’s blog post goes into detail on these and other signs of drowning. As he suggests, the best way to make sure someone isn’t drowning is to ask them if they are OK. If they can talk, they are probably alright.

I wish you safe swimming this summer.