We Keep Talking About Pools. But Most Children with Autism Are Not Drowning in Pools.
In the drowning prevention world, when organizations talk about children with autism, they almost always default to the same framework: layers of protection around the pool. Four-sided fencing. Self-latching gates. Door alarms. Pool alarms. These are important tools and I will never tell you otherwise.
But this framework assumes one thing: that the water is a pool.
And for so many of the families I work with, and for so many of the tragedies I have watched unfold in communities across the country, the water is not a pool.
It is a retention pond at the edge of a neighborhood.
It is a river behind a park.
It is a lake at a family reunion.
It is the ocean on a vacation that was supposed to be joyful.
It is a drainage ditch. A flooded field. A creek that looks shallow and isn't.
Children with autism are drawn to water. We know this. The shimmer, the sound, the movement, the sensory pull of it is powerful and real. And children who elope or wander, nearly half of all children with autism, do not wander toward the nearest fence. They wander toward whatever calls to them.
And water calls to them loudly.
Why the Standard Advice Falls Short
Here is what I need to say plainly, even though it is uncomfortable.
"Install all the layers of protection" is good advice for a home with a pool.
It does not help a family at the beach.
It does not help a family whose neighborhood backs up to a retention pond.
It does not help a family visiting a lake house for the weekend.
It does not help a child who has eloped from the house and reached a body of water before anyone realized they were gone.
And "enroll in swim lessons" — while I believe in swim lessons deeply — is also not a complete answer here. A child who has had swim lessons and finds themselves pulled by a current, caught in a wave, or disoriented in dark open water is in a fundamentally different situation than a child who slipped into a backyard pool. Swim skills matter. They are not sufficient on their own in uncontrolled water environments.
We are giving families a framework built around one type of water and then sending them out into a world full of all the others.
What Is Not Being Documented
Here is another layer of this problem that deserves to be named.
Most states do not document where childhood drownings happen in enough detail to tell us whether a child drowned in a pool, a lake, a river, or a pond. The data is incomplete. The picture is blurry. I’ve spent hours upon hours cross referencing state information with Total Aquatic Programing (TAP) data and I’ve been in this industry for over 35 years.
And when the data is blurry, even for experts in water safety like myself, the conversation defaults to what is most visible and most familiar. Pools. Because pools are in backyards and insurance reports and neighborhood association meetings.
Open water is everywhere else. And it is largely invisible in the data.
That invisibility is costing lives.
Because if we do not know where children with autism are actually drowning, we cannot build the right strategies to prevent it. And if the organizations leading this conversation are not asking the question, families are left without the full picture.
I am asking the questions. And I intend to keep asking them.
The One Strategy That Works Everywhere
Fences work at home. Alarms work at home. Locks work at home.
None of those travel with your child to the beach, the lake, the river, or the retention pond two streets over.
There is one strategy that does travel. One strategy that works in every water environment your child will ever encounter, controlled or not.
Where there is water, I will WAIT®
Not because it is a magic solution. But because it is the only drowning prevention strategy that lives inside your child rather than around a specific body of water. It is a behavior. A reflex. A habit that, when built consistently and early, goes wherever your child goes.
For children with autism, building that habit requires what all meaningful learning requires for our neurodivergent kids: clear language, visual tools, consistent routines, and repetition across multiple environments. Not just at the backyard pool. Not just at swim lessons. At the bathtub, the lake, the beach, the hotel pool, the retention pond at the edge of the park.
Every water environment is a teaching opportunity. And every time your child waits, they are practicing the one skill that can protect them anywhere.
What I Want the Conversation to Include
I am not writing this to criticize the organizations doing this work. I am writing this because I believe they can do more. We all can.
The conversation about drowning prevention for children with autism needs to include open water. It needs to include the reality that elopement does not stop at the property line. It needs to include strategies that travel beyond the fence.
Families deserve a complete picture. Not a pool-centric one.
If you are raising a child with autism and you live near any body of open water, please know that your safety planning needs to extend beyond your home. Talk to your neighbors. Map the water risks in your area. Make sure the people around you know your child, know the risks, and know what to do.
And teach your child, in every environment, every single time:
Where there is water, we WAIT.
That is the conversation I will keep having, even when the room goes quiet.
Dayna Harvey is a water safety expert and swimming instructor certified since 1988. She is AutismSwim certified, a partner of the Autism Society, founder of The WATCHING Initiative, and creator of the Waiting Whales Water Safety Kit. Learn more at watersafetywithmissdayna.com/autism.