Autism and Water Safety: 10 Tips to Prevent Tragedy
Updated on June 3, 2025Summer brings outdoor adventures and water activities for families everywhere. However, for parents of autistic children, the season also presents heightened safety concerns that require special attention. Autistic kids are attracted to water, and the combination of high temperatures and open doors means that elopement and wandering are at a peak. Unfortunately, this attraction to water can lead to dangerous wandering incidents and drowning tragedies. That’s why it’s critical to remind loved ones and others in the autism community about smart steps you can take to keep everyone’s summer both fun and safe.
Why the Draw to Water?
Autism affects the senses. For children with autism, water is uniquely hypnotic and attractive: the effect of light shimmering on the ripples, its rhythmic movement, soothing texture, and even its smell. When autistic people come upon a lake, river, sea, or pool, they naturally want to experience the body of water; even something as simple as a bathtub or fountain can be captivating.
Sadly, this combination too often leads to tragedy. We’re only halfway through 2025, and already there are a number of drowning cases of autistic children this year in the US:
- March 11, 2025, Houston, Texas: An 8-year-old girl with autism wandered from her aunt’s apartment and drowned in a nearby pond.
- April 9, 2025, Jacksonville, Florida: 7-year-old Delaney McGough, a special-needs child, drowned in a local pond.
- April 29, 2025, Rockville, Maryland: Ace Bledsoe, a 3-year-old with autism, left his apartment in the middle of the night and drowned in the building’s pool.
- April 30, 2025, Lyons, Nebraska: 9-year-old Kendrix Brehmer, who had autism, wandered from school and was later found drowned in a nearby lagoon.
- May 17, 2025, Kansas City, Missouri: A non-verbal autistic boy was found drowned in a local pond.
These tragic incidents highlight the urgent need for autism water safety awareness. In response to similar cases, the US federal government passed Kevin and Avonte’s Law in 2018.Named after two autistic drowning victims, this law provides funding to prevent wandering and quickly locate missing individuals with dementia or developmental disabilities.
1. Taking Action Against Autism Drowning
The most effective approach to water safety focuses on preventing unsupervised access to water through multiple layers of protection and awareness. To guide you, here are 10 tips that can help keep your autistic child safe from water dangers:
2. Be Part of Their First Experience
It’s never too soon to teach a child about water safety. As we’ve seen in the case from Rockland, even toddlers can find ways out of the home. Make sure that your child’s first times in the water are with a parent or caregiver who makes it clear that water can be fun, but only when there is an adult around.
3. Send them to Specialized Swimming Lessons
Once your child is ready to learn to swim, take them to a professional teacher with a background in teaching special needs children. There are many organizations that provide such programs, such as Safe Splash, which has more than 150 locations in the USA.
4. Back Up Lessons with Visual Tools
As with many types of learning, it’s helpful to reinforce a swimming safety course with review sessions. Autistic kids respond well to visual explanations, so take the time to summarize what they have learned on display boards or cue cards. The emphasis should be on safety rules.
5. Make Swimming a Routine Activity
Autistic children do well with predictable routines. When you incorporate swimming as a regular part of your child’s schedule, it makes it easier for them to learn and remember the safety rules. This can lead them to actually preferring to do things as they have been taught, like a muscle memory. And hopefully, the number one rule will stick: that they should never approach water by themselves.
6. Discuss Water Safety on a Regular Basis
Take every opportunity to emphasize the danger of water, even when you are not at your regular swimming spot. For example, if you live near a lake, or if one of your relatives has a pool, make sure to mention the rules whenever you are nearby or even before you get there. Similarly, talk to your child about how other families approach water safety. You can even find stories online about water safety to share on a frequent basis with your child.
7. Get the Support of Your Community
It’s important to connect with and educate your neighbors about these risks. Especially if your neighbors have pools, you should warn them about autistic wandering and encourage them to cooperate by, for example, covering it when not in use or setting up a locked gate. You never know, your neighbor might even spot your child going astray one day. It all boils down to communicating with your community by introducing yourself and giving them your contact details.
8. Establish Rules for Yourself
You are the “last line of defense” when it comes to your child’s safety. Make a list of the things that you must personally do during visits to areas with water, and keep it on you. For example, when near or in a body of water:
- Maintain physical contact with your child
- Never let them convince you that they can be alone around water
- Have them wear a life jacket, especially if no swimming is planned
- At public pools, make sure there is an alert lifeguard
- Don’t get distracted by other people or your phone
- Be Careful Who You Leave in Charge
There is no shortage of incidents where a parent left their autistic child in the care of a relative or friend, and the child managed to wander. People who don’t live with an autistic person don’t always understand how often and easily wandering occurs. If you need to go somewhere, even for a minute, only let an adult who is solidly responsible and aware of the risks watch your child. This is doubly true when you are around water.
9. Create Physical Barriers
You can take many precautions to prevent wandering in general and access to water in particular. These include putting up a fence around your pool and installing alarms for the fence and your exterior doorways. To reduce the attractiveness of a pool, make sure to hide all toys/floaties in and around it, and cover the pool when not in use with something durable.
10. Use AngelSense Assistive Technology
Above all, have a fail-safe in place: something that kicks in to prevent wandering even if all of your other precautions don’t work. AngelSense Assistive Technology includes a real-time wearable, GPS monitoring device and an app for the parents, which notifies parents as soon as their child is lost or has wandered away. Features like the Proactive Alerts, Search & Rescue Tools, and the Assistive Speakerphone keep children safe by preventing them from getting near water in the first place. As opposed to swim lessons and other tools that help a child once they are already near a body of water, AngelSense precedes and prevents potential disaster. By notifying the parent or caregiver as soon as the child is at an unexpected location guiding them quickly to the child’s location, and sharing the information with local authorities, AngelSense makes it possible to locate the child much sooner before they even have the chance to enter water.
This Summer, Make Water Safety Top Priority
With all this said, it doesn’t mean that autistic children shouldn’t enjoy the pleasures of water during the summertime. Armed with these tips, you can enjoy the peace of mind that you’ve taken the necessary precautions and your loved one is safe to have fun and splash around. Water is a part of life, and it can and should be a part of autistic people’s lives as well–the smart way.
Get peace of mind from AngelSense, the groundbreaking AI-based assistive technology designed to enhance safety and peace of mind for individuals with special needs and their families. Our solution ensures you stay connected with your loved ones, empowering a higher level of independence while maintaining safety. Learn more about how AngelSense can make a difference for your family.
