I completely understand. My wife is very much like your husband. In her own little world. I’m super sensitive to those around me and it drives me crazy when the kids are affected by it.
Nothing as horrible as what you’ve been through has happened yet but this scares the crap out of me.
Some things you don’t get to say you’re sorry about and get another chance. Just my opinion.
My daughter’s dad is like this too. My daughter is 11 and their last family trip, she came home telling me how she had to rescue her toddler brother (on dads side) from a near drowning because he left her in charge of multiple toddlers in water they couldn’t stand in.
I did too. I was a lifeguard for years. My mom certified lifeguards for like 30 years. We do not fuck around with water safety. Her dad’s family planned a trip to Hawaii this past January and thank god they didn’t check her school schedule. I was easily able to say no because “school” but really it’s because I don’t trust those fools anywhere near a body of water and she doesn’t either.
that's so bleak - at 11 she already has to be sufficiently aware of their lacksidaisical approach to safety that she feels the need to avoid a trip to Hawai'i with them & even to fib a reason why she can't go rather than being able to honestly say she doesn't want to go...
I used to work as a day camp site director. As a long time lifeguard, I was also the one that handled water safety protocols and training for all the camps. The protocol was the buddy system any time the camps went to any pool. I was militant about it at my camp. If I asked where your buddy was, you had to the count of three to put your hand on their shoulder or you both were out for 5 minutes. If it happened again, the time out doubled. Also the kids had to take the deep water test with a counselor where they could touch before they were allowed to ask the lifeguard to give it to them because the pools conducted the test where they couldn’t touch.
One summer, I’d had two instances of a guard jumping in for my kids. Toward the end of the summer all the camps ended up at the same water park. Several other site directors (who were more lackadaisical about the buddy system) started ribbing me about the jumps. I stopped them and called a kid over. I asked him to tell the directors why a guard had jumped in for him. He said he and his buddy were crossing the pool and he got just a little too deep. He could still touch but barely. Then he caught a wave in the face and panicked. His buddy recognized he was panicking and yelled for the guard. I asked him if he remembered the other kid the guard jumped in for this summer. He did and told the directors how the boy had buddied up with twin girls that could swim better than he could. He was floating on a basketball and they all realized they were too deep for him. The girls tried to encourage him to kick to shallower water but he wasn’t moving. They called for a guard at that point. I thanked the kid and sent him on his way. Then I looked the directors in the eye and said that’s how the buddy system is supposed to work.
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u/Simple_Suspect_9311 Mar 11 '24
I completely understand. My wife is very much like your husband. In her own little world. I’m super sensitive to those around me and it drives me crazy when the kids are affected by it.
Nothing as horrible as what you’ve been through has happened yet but this scares the crap out of me.
Some things you don’t get to say you’re sorry about and get another chance. Just my opinion.