Drowning (Really) Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

Today I'm going to share a very personal story that will help you keep your kids safe in the water this summer and for the rest of their lives. All of that and more coming up on The Secure Family Podcast. The problem is getting worse. The amount of personal information that data brokers are collecting on you and me is growing. There are more details, more individual pieces, and more access than ever before.

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Being on the water, whether it's the pool, the ocean, or a lake, is supposed to be a fun time, and it's supposed to be enjoyable with our family. Of course, as parents, we are always worried about our children getting into trouble, and that's understandable. But today I wanna focus on the worst case scenario and what that really looks like, so that if we see anything that looks like one of our kids might be in trouble, we know exactly what to look for and exactly what to do.

Today, I'm gonna share a story that I've never told before. And after thinking about it for a few years, I decided to put my discomfort aside for the greater good of educating parents, which is my life's mission. But before we get there, I want to share one of the greatest safety tips that I ever learned, and that is drowning doesn't look like it does on tv. This came from an article written by Mario Vittone.

Mario is retired from the Coast Guard and wrote this outstanding article titled Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning. Mario writes that most people expect drowning to be loud and dramatic with flailing arms and yelling. In reality, drowning is often silent. And subtle, you have to be watching to see it. Victims can't call for help or wave because their body instinctively focuses on trying to breathe and staying above the water. People go internal during this time.

Often drowning children are within yards of adults who don't recognize the distress signals. And today I'm going to talk to you about all of this. So here are a few signs that a person, child or adult, is in danger of drowning. Their head is low with the water, with their mouth at water level. Their head is tilted back with their mouth open. Their eyes might be glassy or closed. They have a vertical body positioned with little or no leg movement.

There's gonna be gasping or hyperventilating instead of yelling. That's why we can't yell, because we're trying to breathe, attempting to swim, but they're just not making any progress. They might try to roll over on their back, and they also will appear to climb what they call the invisible ladder, which is just this instinctive drowning response. And then the last one is silence. There's not gonna be any calling for help or crazy splashing.

So I read this article in about 2018 or so, and I was so impressed with it that I reached out to Mario to be a guest on the podcast. And until very recently, he was the only person to ever turn me down. But I always remembered his wisdom and I appreciated his professional correspondence with me.

Now, the next part of this is actually very hard to talk about. In fact, it took me two years to even tell my wife about it. And while I am very uncomfortable talking about it, I know the story will stick with you and hopefully help your kids stay safe. One summer afternoon, my family met at the lake with a large group of other families for a fun day out on the water.

Now, since this was a lake, some of the kids were afraid of jumping off the dock and swimming where their feet could not touch the bottom. Some are also afraid that a fish might touch them, and that's fair enough. So I planned on being out there with them and keeping an eye on them. There were a lot of other parents around, most of 'em on the dock. Some were playing with their kids and other part of the, the lake.

So I was certainly not on my own, But floating at a pool noodle and getting splashed with lake water really isn't my idea of a peaceful afternoon. But there I was. All of the elementary aged kids that I was watching were doing great. They had no issues. There were some younger kids who were out there, but their parents were keeping a close eye on them, which I appreciate.

I am sure some of the other parents were thinking I was being too much of a safety spaz being out there with the kids, but that is who I am. At one point I noticed that one of the preschool boys was out in an area on his own. So far he had been within arm's reach of his mom, so seeing him out there by himself was unusual. He was wearing a floaty vest that kept him above water really, really well, and he was swimming around the back of a very large float.

This float was the size of a pontoon boat. It was just massive. I think there were like half a dozen people on it. It was tied to the dock, so it wasn't going anywhere. It was just a place for people to sit, relax, and the boy's mom was on that float. The kid that we're gonna call Jake in the story has no fear. As people say, he's just all boy fearless to the point of getting hurt seemingly every day. And I noticed after a few moments that he was still on his own.

So I decided to float over to him slowly. I didn't wanna approach him real quick or you know, pepper him with a bunch of questions. When I got to him, he stated that he wanted to try to climb back onto the large float, but he was at the tallest point of the float. Nobody was gonna get back onto the spot and no one else could see that he was trying to get up there because they couldn't look down and see where he was.

So as I floated next to him, I asked him what he was up to, and a very calm demeanor that was, you know, just super friendly and not confrontational at all. But being a preschooler, he wasn't as verbal as the other kids. And he let me know that he was just not interested in my help and that he was just gonna do this on his own. So I stayed with him for a little bit longer and finally convinced him to go back around to the side where the other adults could get him.

Once he moved away, I moved back out to the kids that I was watching. I don't know if he broke away from his mom in a busy moment or she was okay with him being out there, but at any point I felt like it was best for him just to go back around there where they could get him. A few moments later, I got a really heavy feeling. Something wasn't right. My intuition was prodding me to check the entire area. So when I say that you need to listen to that little voice inside you, I really mean it.

So as I was looking around, I finally spotted him. Now he was back in that same spot where I had floated over and talked to him the same spot where he was trying to get back up onto the float at the absolute worst place possible. But all I could see of him was his feet. Jake's entire upper body was underwater, and from the angle of his feet, I could tell that he was upside down. His feet were barely visible above the water.

His foot had actually gotten tangled in the thin rope that ran the edge of the giant float. He was stuck in a very bad position. Immediately I swam to him without hesitation or panic. When I arrived, I could tell that his foot was caught in the rope and that he was unable to right himself. He was really stuck. His upper body was underwater. And trapped under the float. The floaty vest that he was wearing was actually pinning him to the bottom of the float.

The this device that was made to save his life was actually now working against him with his foot tangled in the rope. He couldn't overcome the force of the vest or swim to another spot to get out. He was pinned to the bottom of the float. He was pinned to the bottom of the float, silently drowning. Just a few feet away from his mom. The first thing that I did was I unentangled his foot. I reached underwater and found his floaty vest and pulled him up.

What I didn't realize at the time and, and what I saw in that moment, but I couldn't just cognitively understand, was that he was holding his head up when I pulled him out of water. And this is a very good sign because that means that he was conscious and that he hadn't been there underwater long enough to asphyxiate. Also, and this was disturbing. His eyes were wide open. I think the entire time he was trapped under the float. His eyes were open looking for a way out.

And I cannot explain, and for reasons unknown to me, his eyes were completely black. There was no pupil. There was no iris. The, there was no white in his eye like we're used to seeing. It was just solid black, kind of like something that you would see in a horror movie. I called his name and I started talking to him and I immediately started checking him out, and then his body just ejected all of the water out of his system.

It came out of his nose, his mouth, and I swear it came out of his ears. There was this massive amount of water that just flowed out of him. His body was just clearing it out, which is again, another very good sign. And when he had ejected the water, he had closed his eyes, and when he opened them back up, he inhaled the deepest breath of his life and his eyes returned to normal and he started coughing. He looked at me in extreme confusion, but he was breathing and he was moving.

He wasn't panicking, and he started blinking a lot. It actually started to pull away from me just like he wanted to continue swimming. So I held onto that floaty jacket for about another minute or so. And about that time, his dad came around the corner walking on the dock and he said that he'd been looking for Jake and that it was time to go fix lunch. And I looked up at the dad and I said, "Yeah, he needs to get outta

the water." Then I handed him up to his dad and they walked toward the house to get ready for lunch, and he had no idea what had just taken place. I will explain more about this in a minute, but I didn't know what to say or to do at that point. So knowing that he was okay in walking, he was breathing, no CPR was required, so I just floated back to the group of elementary kids that I was watching and continued on with my day.

I watched Jake for the rest of the afternoon run around like a wild man. He ate his weight in Chick-fil-A Nuggets, and he just laughed with all of his preschool friends. And thank God he was completely fine. In retrospect, I realized that his foot being caught in the rope may have really been a blessing.

If he had slipped all the way under the float, we might not have ever found him, and I don't ever think about, you know, what could have happened because God put me in the right place at the right time. This was his plan, and I am so very thankful to have been a part of it. Also, let me say that Jake has good parents. This was a random, odd situation that I never would've thought of unless I hadn't seen it.

And this goes back to my conversation that I had with Gonzalo Senotian, uh, with Combat MF. I had him on the show just before this happened. And so when we talked, the big point that he wanted to drive home was that kids being unsupervised in the pool was one of the greatest threats to our kids. And he's right. I reached out to him after this event and we chatted about it and he helped me realize the, the gravity of the situation that I hadn't really. grasped yet.

Immediately after the event, I just knew that he was in trouble and I had done what needed to be done. That's the protector parent stuff that is second nature to me. I didn't fully realize that I had saved this child from drowning until the next day when I was messaging with Gonzalo. I just did exactly what I knew needed to be done and I didn't know what to think about it after it was all over.

There was a time for a while when I would close my eyes at night and I would just see his feet in the water. While the situation had wonderful results, it still bothered me. It took me two years to even tell my wife, and she was there when it happened, And I also teared up when I told her. I just didn't know what to say, so I just told myself that I did what needed to be done and that was it.

And even now I don't want you to think that I'm telling you the story because I want some sort of credit for it. I don't want that at all. So if we ever chat, please don't bring this up. A year after the event with Jake, I was at the lake with some friends and their sons. And I jumped off the back of a friend's boat and lost the life jacket that I was holding onto. And so for a brief moment, I was underwater and I started to panic. And in that brown water, I could see the sun shining.

And I noticed how I wasn't swimming like I knew to do. And all I could think of was Jake in that moment. In that moment, I understood his point of view. Drowning was really quiet and it's very personal. Obviously I got back up to the water and got to the life vest, but it was just this, this moment of understanding of, oh yeah, I see what it's like. I know how that feels. And it doesn't look or feel like we think it's going to, it doesn't look like what we see in the movies.

And at that particular moment when I was in the water, I jumped off the back of the boat so I wouldn't splash anybody. And nobody had seen me enter the water and nobody knew that I was under there. But again, I came up pretty quick and it was just this moment of understanding, understanding what had happened to Jake, and understanding what Mario had written. So parents, you need to keep an eye on your kids at the pool or at the beach.

You can't scroll on your phone and assume you'll jump into action Baywatch style when you hear your kid yell for help. When your kid clearly yells, I'm drowning, please save me. That's not gonna happen. Their soul will be screaming for you, but they won't make a sound. You have to watch them. And honestly, chances are that they're gonna be yelling, Hey, watch this every 30 seconds anyway, so you might as well just watch.

Mario, if you hear this episode, thank you so much for your article, and you have an open invitation to come on the show anytime you want.

Well, that's everything that I have for today. Thank you, friend for listening. Take back your privacy and personal data with help from DeleteMe. Get 20% off a privacy plan when using the code Dad at checkout. DeleteMe is the official data removal service of The Secure Dad. If you are a DIY person and you want to secure your home, then I have the ultimate checklist for you. My Family Home Security Assessment will walk you through how to protect your home without making it look like a prison.

Download your copy right now at the link in the description. I'm Andy Murphy reminding you that our safety is our own responsibility, especially on the water.