[rbshadel]

I lifeguarded throughout high school and college, and it always surprised me that most of the difficulties I had were with parents/adults. For the most part, kids would give a sullen look and then listen. My only memorable troubles were the occasional adults who would just flat-out ignore or contradict rules, no matter how many times you told them (I always assumed because they thought they knew better than a ~15 year old). At that point, you have a young lifeguard who has to choose between causing a minor scene (ie: whistling a manager over to "tattle" on them) or having other children see rules not being consistently enforced, which they perceive as license to do whatever they want.

I made one rescue after a little girl faceplanted from the high dive and came up crying and clearly struggling - the whole time I was helping her to the wall, I had her mom yelling at me from the pool deck that "she's fine, you're just scaring her!" I came away from that second-guessing myself - that maybe I SHOULDN'T have gone in after her, and that I should've just let it play out a little more - which is a really scary thing to second-guess.

[tat45]

I would imagine that the go-to for situations like this is "Ma'am, just following my training."

[mvgoogler]

I (obviously) wasn't there but it sounds like you did the right thing.

At the end of the day you were the one sitting in the chair and had to make a judgement call based on your training and observations.

Think of this way - if you hadn't reacted as you did and the girl ended up injured or dead, how much worse would you feel today?

[beachstartup]

hey, look at it this way. the girl was fine. by definition, you did your job well. that's the best desired outcome of all cases, whether or not you made the wrong call.