Kids Around Water - Enough is Enough

Here was the headline on the local Phoenix ABC affiliate website on September 10th:

Infant in critical condition after being pulled from bathtub.

This was not the first nor will it probably be the last announcement of a child going underwater in bathtub or pool. Yes, we live in a desert and there are a lot of swimming pools and bathtubs in our city and the surrounding communities (Maricopa County is the 4th most populated county in the U.S.). The shear number of water hazards is NOT, however, a license for a parent to allow themselves to become too distracted to focus on the safety of their child or the child in their care.

Year after year, kids are pulled from swimming pools and other water hazards of all sorts of depths. Some folks feel empathy for those poor parents who lost a child because they were more focused on their cell phones or the UPS delivery at the front door or their boyfriend/girlfriend than they were on their unattended child around enough water to drown them in practically no time.

All too often, the offending parent or caregiver is offered condolences on their loss. Shouldn’t the neglect that leads to a child’s death or permanent brain injury be considered more of a criminal act, similar to manslaughter. Agreed that the offending parent or caregiver has to live with the result for the remainder of their lives, but simply putting our arms around the offending adult is not reducing the number of drownings and near-drownings to the numbers at which they SHOULD be. It’s time to stop condoning this carelessness as simply unfortunate accidents!

I have four adult children who have children of their own. The highest priority of our family’s lives has been the protection and safety of the children. When we went to a Disney park, we took head-counts before and after each attraction. When visiting the zoo, we made sure we had all the kids safely in tow and that none of them became so fascinated by the tigers that they tried climbing the fence to pet one. A visit to the ocean always meant eagle-eyed vision of every one of those kids the entire time we were at the beach. NOTHING was ever more important nor distracting enough to lose sight of one of our precious team members. When they were little and went into the bathtub, an adult was always right there for the entire procedure. An easy focus that seems to lost on some people today, and I’m sick of reading about it and hearing about it on the local news with too much regularity.

It isn’t that difficult.