Emily Tiemann

They are such a false sense of security! We could have been a statistic… Thank goodness we were not. In 2016, my then not not quite 4YO – jumped in the pool WITHOUT his puddle jumper.  I saw it from our door way… someone at our pool party let him in the gated pool area. He didn’t realize he wasn’t wearing his puddle jumper and jumped right on in with the other kids who were calling him in.  He went straight to the bottom in the vertical position. I can still visualize his little face under the water. A moment etched in my memory. I was seconds behind him but it was traumatizing for us both. I couldn’t imagine loosing him in that moment. 

He learned to swim that next summer, thankfully. We did not use a puddle jumper for our next kiddo. She took ISR lessons since she was 6 months old and is now a little fish at 4.