One of the things Nicole Hughes, mother of Levi, regrets is not teaching her son how to swim — or at least how to float. The family had been staying at a vacation rental with a pool when the 3-year-old somehow left a house full of people one evening and got in the pool. Levi died.
Nicole and her husband are responsible parents. Her husband is a doctor and coaches softball. Nicole is a Girl Scout leader, a room mom, and an English teacher.
“How were years of intentional parenting seemingly nullified within seconds?” Nicole asks herself.
Before Levi’s death, Nicole spent a lot of time thinking about how to raise healthy kids. She worried about sun exposure and sunscreen, smart phones and excess screen time, the merits of organic food, and cavities.
She also worried about drowning. Nicole has 16 photos of her son from the day he died, and he is wearing a life jacket in 14 of them.
The family had spent the day in the sun and on the water and had gone back to their vacation rental to have dinner. Nicole had just finished the dishes when Levi drowned. Levi had been wearing a life vest all day, but he wasn’t wearing it then. Why would he?
“We weren’t drinking, weren’t on our phones, and had finished swimming for the day,” Nicole remembers.
He got past a room filled with friends and family, a heavy front door, and a self-latching pool gate. Nicole still can’t understand it.
According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, 69 percent of kids who drown were in the water unexpectedly.
That’s a statistic that really bothers Nicole today. Now, she knows that drownings don’t always happen when you are wearing your swimsuit. They also happen when you are loading the car or looking for your casserole dish.
Levi always wore a life jacket when in the pool. And Nicole and her husband had done the research and were following what was then the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation to wait until the age of 4 for formal swim lessons.
Today, Nicole believes in teaching infants how to survive just in case they find themselves alone in the water. Infant swim lessons are focused on simple survival skills, such as learning how to roll onto your back and float. It’s a very last layer of protection if a child gets past all of the other barriers.
“After Levi drowned, I heard about swim programs that taught babies how to float,” Nicole said. “Hundreds of parents reached out to me to share their passionate testimonials of how these swim lessons saved their children. I was admittedly skeptical. However, as I continued to research pediatric drowning, I saw consistent factors: Children who drown usually loved water, they had relied on a flotation device when swimming in pools, and they did not know how to survive if they reached water alone.
“My perception of water shifted, and on the exact day that marked 20 months since Levi’s death, we handed over our 8-month-old daughter Willow, Levi’s little sister, to her first Infant Swimming Resource lesson. I watched her take on water and win. She was not just trained to float; she learned to roll her infant body, find the surface, and get air. Even beyond her ability to survive in water, Willow began to develop a lifetime respect for water.”
Levi’s death happened in a moment. One moment he was on the couch. The next, he was in the pool.
In Levi’s case, having swim survival skills might have bought Nicole the scant moment she needed to save him.
Nicole Hughes with her beautiful son Levi.
