10/19/2026
Today Joe is 5 days away from being 2 years old and 9 months, the exact same age Vinny was when we lost him.
It’s been over 4 years and my mind still can’t fathom how a mother is supposed to live without her child. Or a father without his son. It’s just not the way it’s supposed to happen. And yet, we do.
Today as I was putting clothes away, Joe got granite cleaner and started cleaning the windows. Straight smeared liquid over each window in the dining room. He was so proud of himself and loved that he was cleaning. I was only putting Luca’s clothes in his drawers and hanging a few shirts. Literal minutes. The same exact time that I didn’t have eyes on Joe, I didn’t have on Vinny. Except one found a pool and the other found spray cleaner.
One ended in tragedy and the other, a funny thing we can laugh about.
And that’s seriously how easy it is to lose your baby forever.
We simply can’t have our eyes on each of our kids every second of every day.
And they truly think they’re cleaning the window, or floating themselves in that puddle jumper.
They’re determined little humans.
Drowning happens in 30 seconds.
It’s silent. It’s not thrashing around like the movies.
It happens MOST when they’re not swimming.
It’s the number 1 cause of death for children ages 1-4 and number 2 cause of death for children under 14.
Most kids who drown have loving and attentive parents, like you. Like us.
We have GOT to think differently about water safety. We have to put as many layers in place as possible between them and the pool.
✅Never introduce them to floatation devices in pools. They can’t differentiate between the device holding them up and their own ability.
✅Survival swim at 6 months.
✅Maintenance/Refresher lessons to keep their skills current with their growing bodies
✅If you have a pool, you need a pool fence
✅Door locks/alarms
We teach our kids to look both ways when they cross the street but for a pool, we strap a floatation device on them that makes them think they can swim, when they can’t swim.
Why aren’t we empowering them to SURVIVE in the biggest threat to their lives? They’re so capable!
Why are we teaching them they can be independent in the biggest threat to their lives?
When car accidents were the biggest threat to their lives, they invented car seats. It’s not the #1 cause of death anymore because of car seats protecting them. Now that drowning is the #1 cause of death for children ages 1-4, why is the societal norm to keep doing the same thing that we’ve been doing? 🤯 you know the definition of crazy, right?
Guess it makes sense why drowning is so prevalent, huh? 🤔
‼️Ditch the puddle jumpers, enroll in survival swim, get a pool fence and heed our advice!
On this day that we’ve silently been marching toward, just take a minute to think about how easily drowning can happen. Are you confident that if your child found water within the 30 seconds you weren’t staring at them, they’d know how to survive without you?
I’d do anything to go back to 5 years ago and read a post like this one. Open my mind a little bit to the prevalence of drowning. Maybe things would be different.
Maybe I would have thought twice when we came inside and I thought we were safe.
