do you know what drowning looks like?

[Gwen]

i'm putting this in parenting cause every parent needs to read this but in reality everyone should read it.

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for, is rarely seen in real life.

The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening (source: CDC).

[Guest Alana]

We had a pool at a house we rented for a few months. Twice I got a 'feeling' and knew my 2 year old brother had fallen in the pool. He wasn't thrashing around at all, he looked like he was treading water underwater, the surface of the water was totally still. We didn't stay at that house very long.