I’m glad she’s totally fine. Maybe even a net positive for her and the family on future water safety. It showcases the importance of thinking about bodies of water beyond the prototypes.
A somewhat similar event occurred last weekend with my toddler in a pool. I was less than a foot away from him, as intended, and he was walking around in waist-deep water. Lost his feet but his waist is taller than his arms are long—so he needed me to intervene. He swallowed a little water in the less than two seconds he was sloshing around, but he otherwise didn’t care.
The lesson is the same: the bottom needs to be reliable enough that they can regain footing + footing may mean arm lengths + you basically can’t count on buoyancy/control (even if he had his arms straight out he might not know how to properly keep his head out, he might not know to hold his breath, and also he might be panicking) = don’t go swimming alone.
The lesson is the same: the bottom needs to be reliable enough that they can regain footing
My mother was a trained lifeguard, and the lesson is more general than that: Young children can and do drown in a few inches of water. This is apparently a well-known risk, at least among lifeguards. I don’t know all the mechanics of this, or what the age cutoff is, but it is something that lifeguards are (or at least were?) taught to watch for.
I teach lifesaving, and it is true that children can drown in even very shallow water. At the most basic mechanical level, you just need to be able to find a head position where they are lying down with both nose and mouth submerged for it to be possible. I once collected drowning data from a coroner’s office, and its really sad how many children drown when their mum gets a phone call during bath time.
I suspect that most people assume water depth is a good metric for safety, and that its actually quite a bad way of measuring it. If you have someone who can swim, then it doesn’t matter if the pond is ten-thousand leagues deep. If they become unable to swim (eg. they have an epileptic seizure, or hit their head and fall unconscious, or try and hold their breath underwater and fall unconscious, get into a playfight with a sibling and get pushed under the water, become entangled in a net, become confused, or are so surprised to fall in that they freeze, or accidentally breath in water and start panicking) then it doesn’t make that much difference if its only 30cm deep, that is still deep enough to immerse the face.
I would guess that the difference between being supervised, and not, is much much bigger than the difference between 10cm and 10,000km.
“Shallow enough to stand up”, while presumably somewhat important, is not an all-important break point, because most things that would disrupt your ability to swim (confusion, unconsciousness, injury, panic, entanglement, cold water shock) might also disrupt your ability to stand.
In this case it sounds like the child, after landing in the water, was so surprised/shocked by it that she froze, and didn’t put her legs down. (I would guess the claim afterwards that she couldn’t was rationalization, and that the real reason was she was stunned with surprise, just based on the sense that I can’t imagine the dress was really that restrictive).
I would guess the claim afterwards that she couldn’t was rationalization, and that the real reason was she was stunned with surprise, just based on the sense that I can’t imagine the dress was really that restrictive
The dress was my speculation (and not that it was restrictive, but that it was buoyant under her legs). Her claim was that her legs wouldn’t go down, and while I haven’t tested this myself in water I think this is probably right: you need to bend your legs to get them under you, and she was keeping them straight due to inexperience with water.
That’s true and a very important point I wish I had included. I assumed consciousness and some unstated degree of able-bodiedness. A good hit to the head on the way in and/or certain physical limitations, and mere inches of depth will be the determinant.
I interpreted “net positive” as ‘net positive given the actual (non-disastrous) outcome’, rather than net positive ex ante.
Regardless, thanks for the OP. I only have niblings, not kids of my own, and I’m by nature pretty cautious anyway—but I sometimes struggle to judge which of my fears to take seriously and which ones to chill out about. Your story gave me a useful jolt and made sure I keep water safety in the “justified paranoia” column!
I’m glad she’s totally fine. Maybe even a net positive for her and the family on future water safety. It showcases the importance of thinking about bodies of water beyond the prototypes.
A somewhat similar event occurred last weekend with my toddler in a pool. I was less than a foot away from him, as intended, and he was walking around in waist-deep water. Lost his feet but his waist is taller than his arms are long—so he needed me to intervene. He swallowed a little water in the less than two seconds he was sloshing around, but he otherwise didn’t care.
The lesson is the same: the bottom needs to be reliable enough that they can regain footing + footing may mean arm lengths + you basically can’t count on buoyancy/control (even if he had his arms straight out he might not know how to properly keep his head out, he might not know to hold his breath, and also he might be panicking) = don’t go swimming alone.
My mother was a trained lifeguard, and the lesson is more general than that: Young children can and do drown in a few inches of water. This is apparently a well-known risk, at least among lifeguards. I don’t know all the mechanics of this, or what the age cutoff is, but it is something that lifeguards are (or at least were?) taught to watch for.
I teach lifesaving, and it is true that children can drown in even very shallow water. At the most basic mechanical level, you just need to be able to find a head position where they are lying down with both nose and mouth submerged for it to be possible. I once collected drowning data from a coroner’s office, and its really sad how many children drown when their mum gets a phone call during bath time.
I suspect that most people assume water depth is a good metric for safety, and that its actually quite a bad way of measuring it. If you have someone who can swim, then it doesn’t matter if the pond is ten-thousand leagues deep. If they become unable to swim (eg. they have an epileptic seizure, or hit their head and fall unconscious, or try and hold their breath underwater and fall unconscious, get into a playfight with a sibling and get pushed under the water, become entangled in a net, become confused, or are so surprised to fall in that they freeze, or accidentally breath in water and start panicking) then it doesn’t make that much difference if its only 30cm deep, that is still deep enough to immerse the face.
I would guess that the difference between being supervised, and not, is much much bigger than the difference between 10cm and 10,000km.
“Shallow enough to stand up”, while presumably somewhat important, is not an all-important break point, because most things that would disrupt your ability to swim (confusion, unconsciousness, injury, panic, entanglement, cold water shock) might also disrupt your ability to stand.
In this case it sounds like the child, after landing in the water, was so surprised/shocked by it that she froze, and didn’t put her legs down. (I would guess the claim afterwards that she couldn’t was rationalization, and that the real reason was she was stunned with surprise, just based on the sense that I can’t imagine the dress was really that restrictive).
The dress was my speculation (and not that it was restrictive, but that it was buoyant under her legs). Her claim was that her legs wouldn’t go down, and while I haven’t tested this myself in water I think this is probably right: you need to bend your legs to get them under you, and she was keeping them straight due to inexperience with water.
That’s true and a very important point I wish I had included. I assumed consciousness and some unstated degree of able-bodiedness. A good hit to the head on the way in and/or certain physical limitations, and mere inches of depth will be the determinant.
I don’t think so: this could easily have happened when no one was attentive and that would have been a disaster.
I interpreted “net positive” as ‘net positive given the actual (non-disastrous) outcome’, rather than net positive ex ante.
Regardless, thanks for the OP. I only have niblings, not kids of my own, and I’m by nature pretty cautious anyway—but I sometimes struggle to judge which of my fears to take seriously and which ones to chill out about. Your story gave me a useful jolt and made sure I keep water safety in the “justified paranoia” column!
Yes, that’s what I meant, thanks.