The one thing most likely to kill your child this summer (it’s probably not what you think)

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If Summer 2021 plays out like all the others, at least a few dozen Canadian children will not be returning to school in September due to death or serious injury suffered as a result of drowning. Drowning is one of the leading causes of death for children around the world, and yet it consistently fails to generate quite the same amount of fear as other risks to children.

Watch the latest Everything Should Be Better video or read the transcript below to learn why an unassuming body of water is the number one reason your child may not reach graduation.

It’s been a great year for worrying about our children. Will they be killed by COVID-19 at school? Will they be killed by COVID-19 at the playground? Or, maybe they’ll be different and be killed by a bird of prey or something.

I don’t want to tell you how to parent, but chances are that your worrying game needs work. Because one of the main things killing children this year — as in every year — is something that you probably haven’t even thought about.

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Drowning.

In Canada, the number one killer of children aged 1 to 14 is accidental injuries. That’s higher than suicide or any one disease. And among those injuries, the prime killers by far are car crashes and drownings.

In the U.S., drowning is by far the number one killer for toddlers. The country had 378 drownings of children between 1 and four years old in just 2019. That’s more than every single U.S. minor who has died of COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

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And the stats get even worse when you start counting children who weren’t killed by drowning, but were left with permanent brain damage.

Simply put, if anything is going to stop your toddler from reaching graduation, it’s a body of water deeper than four inches.

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So why so many drownings?

For one, it’s really quick. You can go from healthy child to not breathing in 20 seconds. And it’s quiet: Water muffles the sounds of screams. People have an image of a drowning person loudly flailing for help, but it’s much more subtle.

Here is video from a public pool in Finland. All this child has to do is take a few steps towards the deep end and he is suddenly fighting for his life — and nobody around him can tell.

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What also makes drownings so prevalent is that people just don’t see bodies of water as a lethal threat to their children.

How about a quaint backyard pond? From a purely statistical perspective, letting your kid play around it is about as dangerous as letting them play around a loaded shotgun. You wouldn’t bring your kids to visit a friend who kept loaded guns around their backyard, but a pond is fine.

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Every year, thousands of parents forego trick-or-treating due to fears of tainted candy. But here’s a guess many of those parents wouldn’t think twice about letting their 6-year-old roam freely around a campground with an unfenced pool.

What about a bucket? It’s a bucket! You use it to mop floors. But in the U.S. alone, bucket drownings have killed nearly 300 young children since 1984. Under your sink right now is an object way more likely to kill your kid than any serial killer lurking outside the soccer field.

If an amusement park kills a child, it can expect national headlines, police investigations and maybe even an official inquiry. But chances are good that, right now, you’re within a short walk of a pond, pool or swimming hole that has claimed a young life without you even knowing.

Swimming is great for kids, and the lesson here is not to avoid water at all costs. All it needs is some greater respect. If the beach bordered a cliff instead of the ocean, you wouldn’t crack a beer and assume the kids will be fine.

The more you can keep in mind that open water to a child is about as dangerous as falling into a nest of vipers, the more likely you are to ensure nothing tragic happens.

• Email: thopper@postmedia.com | Twitter: TristinHopper