child drownings – Doctors and drowning-prevention advocates say more U.S. children are dying in pools and bathtubs, with deaths rising after the COVID-19 disruption. A family tragedy tied to Stew Leonard’s foundation puts a simple message at the center: seconds matter, and adul
On a pool deck, a moment can feel routine right up until it isn’t. In 1989, Stew Leonard was outside hanging balloons while his wife baked a birthday cake for their daughter’s party. Inside and around them, family and guests gathered. Then the silence of searching set in.
His 21-month-old son, Stewie—named for his father and known for a life-jacketed duck mascot that later sang about not drowning—was missing. “I saw Stewie outside and I assumed that he (Leonard) was watching him,” Kim Leonard later recalled. “When everyone’s watching, nobody’s watching.”
Leonard remembered balloons floating in the water, and how the questions became frantic only after minutes passed. “And you know after a few minutes, sort of everybody was like, ‘Where’s Stewie?’ Unfortunately I was the one who found him. He was face down in the pool.”
That tragedy became the engine for a foundation dedicated to children’s swimming lessons and drowning prevention. It also sits at the center of a warning doctors say families still need to hear loudly: “When drowning occurs. seconds matter. ” said Dr. Rohit Shenoi, lead author of a recent American Academy of Pediatrics warning. “Quick rescue and resuscitation can mean the difference between life, death and lifelong disability.”.
In the United States. about 4. 000 to 5. 000 Americans drown each year. and most are adults who die in natural bodies of water such as lakes. ponds and oceans. But in statistics about children, drowning stands out with a brutal clarity. It is the No. 1 cause of death for kids ages 1 to 4 and one of the top killers for children ages 5 to 14. The drowning rate is higher for white children in the younger group. but it is much higher for Black. American Indian and Alaska Native children in the older group.
Very young children can drown in bathtubs, but most drownings—like Stewie’s—occur in swimming pools.
Doctors say the overall picture worsened after years of progress. Unintentional child drowning deaths fell from around 2. 000 a year in the 1980s to below 1. 000 a year by the early 2000s. helped by public awareness campaigns. expanded access to swimming lessons. and the adoption of pool fencing laws. Between 2000 and 2019, health officials recorded a 38% drop.
Then the trend reversed. The number of child drowning deaths rose from 756 in 2019 to 865 in 2024, the most recent year for which complete data is available. The bulk of those deaths were children younger than 5. The child drowning death rate increased slightly, from 1.1 to 1.2 per 100,000 children.
Part of the explanation, advocates say, is that the safeguards that reduce risk were disrupted. The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted swimming lessons and lifeguard training programs and contributed to a national lifeguard shortage. Tessa Clemens. senior director for drowning prevention initiatives at the CDC Foundation. said some data also suggests an increase in swimming pool construction and increases in unsupervised swimming.
Kym Roberts, who studies drownings in Australia—where child drownings have been either level or decreasing in recent years—said drowning in young children is often tied to falls into water and lapses in direct supervision.
There may be some movement in the right direction, but it is not enough to relax. Preliminary U.S. data for last year suggests child drownings declined. Still, Clemens said it is not clear whether that’s the start of a trend, and deaths remain higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
New technology is tempting for families. Inventors have developed immersion alarms that sound when the wristband a child is wearing goes underwater. But manufacturers say the devices can serve as an extra warning system and should not be treated as the primary way to keep children safe.
And support from government agencies has shifted in ways that leave advocates looking elsewhere. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laid off Clemens and the rest of the staff of its drowning prevention program last year. Guidance and drowning prevention support continue to come from other organizations. including the CDC Foundation and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The CDC Foundation has funded basic swimming and water safety skills training for more than 35,000 students since 2024. That program operates in 11 states with higher drowning rates: Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Oklahoma and Texas.
The AAP points to policies it says can make a difference—lifeguard standards, life jacket regulations, and requirements that swimming pools be completely surrounded by fences with self-closing, self-latching gates.
But for Stew Leonard. prevention comes down to the basics paired with training: swimming lessons for young kids and caregiver attention when children are near water. “I mean, I love ballet. I love karate. I love tennis lessons. You know, all the activities that kids can do,” he said. “But the only thing you can do to save their life is put them in swimming lessons.”.
His foundation has funded over 250,000 swimming lessons and opened two swimming schools—one across the street from the company’s headquarters in Norwalk, Connecticut.
He also focused on what adults do in those moments. “Shut your cellphones off when you’re around the pool, watching the kids. Don’t sit there reading a book. Don’t sit there talking to your friends, neglecting your child that’s near the water,” he said. “This happens in the blink of an eye.”
The facts, the timeline, and the stories all land on the same point: drowning risk does not wait for awareness campaigns to catch up. It arrives fast—fast enough that families, doctors say, must plan for seconds before they ever walk onto the deck.
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