[keanzu]

Somehow people don't realize the danger that pools possess.

Swimming is one of the few activities that children engage in which can go so wrong as to end up in their death. I would suggest that it is borderline negligence for a parent to put a child in such a dangerous situation without proper precautions (supervision). I wouldn't let a small child I am responsible for go into a pool alone regardless of the presence of lifeguards. Especially not a wave pool.

[killjoywashere]

> I wouldn't let a small child I am responsible for go into a pool alone

You would. Let me give you the scenario: you're home alone with the three kids, you've been chasing them around, doing laundry, cleaning up spilled grape juice, telling Jenny to stop cutting Tommy's hair, etc. Finally, you think everyone is down for a nap. You turn on the game. 5 minutes later, 5 minutes, you think "It's too quiet...". You get up and walk around for a couple minutes to find 4 year-old Sally's door open. No Sally. Where's Sally? Sprint around the house, run down to the kitchen, look in the back yard, and she's face down in the pool. You immediately get her out, desperate. You realize you have to separate from her to call 911. She's been unaccounted for by now for 12 minutes.

The paramedics get a breath back, but anoxic brain injury has set in. She dies, tubes in every orifice, 3 days later.

I have seen this play out more than once. My parents had a pool. I was a lifeguard, have made rescues. I was also on swim team, I'm in the Navy now, and I'm a physician. I surf, I dive, I do open ocean swimming and triathlons. I've helped rescue a diver in pulmonary edema. I think I wouldn't leave my kid unattended, but I know I might.

I've met the parents. They wouldn't let a small child go into a pool alone either.

[keanzu]

I have a pool.

I have a fence.

A friend's son was visiting, also four years old, vanished for just a second and suddenly I thought Oh god, the pool. Sure enough there he was stuck outside the fence trying to get to the pool but frustrated that the latching mechanism can only be operated by someone at least 5 feet tall.

I wouldn't let a small child go into a pool alone. Pool safety is life and death. Get a fence.

[antasvara]

That was an extreme example,the point is that kids can end up in the water in unexpected ways. Even parents that would never intentionally leave children in the water alone can end up in a situation where a child is unattended in the water. Perhaps a better example is when you have 4 kids to keep an eye on at a public pool, and you lose track of one while dealing with an injury to another, or reapplying sunscreen, or a number of other reasons to be distracted. Or what about the situation where you send your kids outside to play and they sneak back to the pool? No sensible person would let their children into the pool alone, but it can absolutely happen to even the most careful adult.

[Ma8ee]

A pool needs at least two lines of protection. One day the three year old will drag a garden chair or the box someone left out to the fence and climb over it.

[cryptonector]

Better yet: don't have a private pool.

[dotancohen]

The houses in my new construction neighborhood all have pools. We deleted the pool and got almost no cash back, so far as I know we were the only family to do so. I'm not carrying that responsibility.

[cryptonector]

+1.

I don't know why my comment above was downvoted, but we did consider buying a house with a pool when our kids were young, and we decided that the risk was ETOOHIGH, especially given that we have a wonderful community pool in the neighborhood.

Pools are expensive to operate and dangerous to have children around -- your own as well as your guests'.

[mcv]

I don't mind leaving my child unattended for a short period in a safe area. But not near a pool.

Of course luxury homes with their own pool in the backyard put rather a big strain on safety around your own home. Put a good fence around it, I guess.

[robocat]

Some countries and states with pool culture legally require a fence around all pools. As far as I can tell, New Zealand has a legal requirement for a fence for over 30 years. There is a little more info on other countries here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_fence

[keanzu]

> I don't mind leaving my child unattended for a short period in a safe area.

...and safety is relative to this child's capability. My parents put me through extensive swimming lessons from a young age precisely so they could let me play unsupervised in the ocean. I'd been a half mile out to sea alone by the time I was 10. Turns out I wasn't as unsupervised as I thought; my mum was freaking out but, unable to swim, couldn't do anything about it!

But if the child can't swim, no alone pool time for them.

[mcv]

Exactly. My oldest son, now 10, has been perfectly able to swim on his own. We live in a former port area with lots of great swimming spots that he visits with his friends. But he's got his swimming diplomas (two of them, which I consider the minimum for this situation).

Sea, though, can be tricky. Half a mile out to sea, currents can be very different. I know that I as a kid once floated on a tiny inflatable boat quite a bit out to sea, and my dad swam after me to drag me back. I thought I could get back on my own, but my dad clearly wasn't entirely convinced.

[wahern]

A true story about an autistic boy and his father who spent a whole night drifting after a riptide pulled them out to sea: https://www.mensjournal.com/features/lost-in-the-waves-19691...

[lacker]

I don't have a pool, thus solving this problem.

[strbean]

Until someone breaks into your backyard and sets up a kiddy pool, and your toddler goes and falls into it!

[reaperducer]

I suppose you also avoid getting mugged by never leaving your room, thus solving this problem.

[vasco]

It depends on the child's ability. Plenty of kids were swimming by themselves in the ocean at 8 or younger because they had a lot of experience or even doing competive swimming from younger ages. Most parents when I was a kid would set rules as too how far into the sea you could swim and that'd be it. I think this is common throughout the world in places close to beaches as I was.

[_ph_]

I think the key is: learn swimming in an early age and then regularly go swimming. Swimming, not using floating toys. Children, who regularly play in the water - we did all kind of water-wrestling :) - can get extremely proficient at it.

[jschwartzi]

Yeah I’m taking swimming lessons as an adult after totally failing to retain what I was taught as a child. You have to practice and play in the water constantly to develop any proficiency. To get a child to do that means they have to not be afraid of the water.

[Swizec]

Can confirm, grew up near the sea, was free diving for shiny rocks and shells by 7 or 8 and would spend hours in the water every day of vacation. Parents had to basically drag me out so I wouldn’t starve.

[gowld]

Swimming is weird, right? Imagine if whenever you took a step outside you had to remember to put your foot back down or else you'd drift off into the vacuum of space. You could jump and fly around like a balloon but if you went too high you could never get back down. Swimming is that but upside-down.

[pmarreck]

> Swimming is one of the few activities that children engage in which can go so wrong as to end up in their death

Climbing trees (fall risk)

Climbing tall playground equipment (I broke my arm falling from a height of just 3 feet once, on one of those). Broken neck, etc.

Playing in the street (cars)

Bicycling (can get hit by a car, sigh)

Trampoline (don't get me started)

Exploring (falling down deep wells, etc.)

The Gashlycrumb Tinies is not just a morbid story about impossible deaths. Living is dangerous, living young possibly especially so!

[yCombLinks]

Drowning far outweighs all of those categories for ages 1 - 9 https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_inj...

In the large majority of motor vehicle incidents the child is an occupant of the vehicle : https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

[Defenestresque]

The graph in your first link is absolutely fascinating. I found the number of "Unintentional Poisoning" and "Suicide" deaths especially surprising (due to the high numbers)

[DanBC]

In the US children aged under 9 cannot be counted as a death by suicide.

Suicide means "the deceased ended their life, and had the intent to do so". The US says that people under the age of 9 cannot make a reasoned decision about killing themselves, and thus cannot have the intent to die.

So there will be some people under 9 who killed themselves. It will be a very small number. But their death will be counted as something other than suicide.

[slavik81]

Unintentional poisonings have rocketed up the charts in the past few years. It didn't used to be in first place. That's the fentanyl crisis you're seeing.

[keanzu]

The document we were looking at for poisoning was from 2011.

10 Leading Causes of Injury Deaths by Age Group HighlightingUnintentional Injury Deaths, United States – 2011

[slavik81]

It seems I'm getting old, but you can watch it happen:

2007 - https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/unintentional_2007_bw...

2008 - https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_injury...

2009 - https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_injury...

2010 - https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10lcid_unintentional_...

2011 - https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_inj...

All Data - https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/LeadingCauses.html

[pmarreck]

Jesus. Multiple types of suffocation for babies < 1 yr old

[keanzu]

I see they have a category "Unintentional Pedestrian, Other" unable to find a glossary. Possibly refers to being hit by MV while a pedestrian?

Unintentional Poisoning seems really common for adults?! Misuse of prescription drugs apparently.

[yCombLinks]

That's also illegal drugs, IE opiod overdoses

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5605a1.htm

[hutzlibu]

From your link:

5-9: Unintentional Drowning 128

Unintentional Fire/Burn 81

I would not call that "far outweighs".

[yCombLinks]

I can agree with that not "far outweighing", but those are mostly home fires : https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/105/6/1355#re... not "activities that children engage in"

[hutzlibu]

Household:

- various kitchentools, knives, fork

- other tools, axe, hammer

- (poison) cleaning stuff

- climbing on the tish and falling on their neck

- ...

Yes, life is dangerous, yet sadly most parents today take the approach of avoiding all dangers at all cost.

And of course you should not leave dangerous things around and make it as safe as possible, but how can one learn, how to deal with dangers, when all the slightest dangers are removed? That will only hurt later on.

One have to play with fire, to learn how to deal with it. If parents forbid it completely, kids will just burn stuff on their own. I did ... and luckily I never burned anything down. But friends of mine ... allmost burned down a village.

[buckminster]

Making fireworks that closely resembled pipe bombs (almost blew leg off)

[pmarreck]

oh jesus. yeah, exactly!

I had a pyromaniac phase. Once set a field on fire. Things could have gone extremely worse.

[ryandrake]

Fellow 90's kid-pyro checking in. I remember when my father finally found my stash of black powder, metal tubing, various makeshift cannons, and flammable chemicals. Didn't really get in trouble--he was relieved it wasn't something as dangerous as weed.

[glenneroo]

Among destructive devices built as kids in the 90s, I think our crowning accomplishment was the Thermite we made as teenagers... only possible thanks to my friend who was somehow able to acquire a big block of Magnesium. I provided the Aluminium baseball bat ;) We got lucky that it fizzled out partway through (maybe from hitting dirt?), but his parents were definitely not too thrilled about the nasty hole in the concrete patio.

[razakel]

Peter Thiel mentions in his autobiography that, out of the six co-founders of PayPal, four of them made bombs in high school.

[keanzu]

Tory Bruno, CEO of the United Launch Alliance, made rockets out of 80yo moldy dynamite. 6m10s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdPoVi_h0r0

[zipwitch]

Moldy? Psh, that's nothing. The real excitement begins when you play with the sweat coming off the dynamite, like we did back when I was a kid in the 80s!

Note: the above is sarcasm. "Sweating" or "weeping" dynamite is dangerous and you should immediately leave the area and contact your local equivalent of 'the bomb squad' to report it.

[kempbellt]

The most likely outcome from all the scenarios you mentioned is that nothing happens. Kids do these things all the time and are just fine.

Injuries occur occasionally, and even less frequently are those injuries fatal.

A friend of mine supermaned head-first into a tree while snowboarding last year. The tree was probably a foot in diameter, and he was going fast enough to shake snow off the whole tree. What happened? Nothing. We all laughed about it and kept snowboarding.

We are pretty resilient creatures when it comes to impact damage.

Drowning though, completely different. Much like filling a car's oil intake with dirt and then having the engine immediately seize. If you start breathing in water, you're do some serious damage to your lungs and cutting off oxygen to your brain, and further inhibiting basic survival functionality, and quickly resulting in death, if not remedied immediately.

[keanzu]

So none of those activities resulted in your death? Or are you posting on HN from beyond the grave?

[pmarreck]

None did, this was a counterargument to the claim that swimming was "one of the few" ways for kids to die.

There are unfortunately many many ways for kids to die.

[cortesoft]

Yeah, but drowning is way more common than the other ones. This is like saying, "Well, I am not going to wear my seat belt, since people also die from being struck by lightning"

Just because multiple things are possible doesn't mean they are equally probable.