Raising Croc-Wise Kids

Children are, heartbreakingly, over-represented in the history of crocodilian tragedy, and the reasons are no mystery. A child is smaller and more easily taken. A child is drawn to water and to play. And children do not always appreciate dangers that adults can see plainly. No adult was present when the children entered the water that afternoon; the adults who saw the swollen, fast-flowing creek afterward said they would not have gone in, given the state of it. The children went in because they did not know any better — to them it was simply the familiar swimming hole, not a death trap. Adults see things children cannot. That gap between how an adult and a child read the same water is exactly the gap this chapter is trying to close.