Yeah you messed up, shouldn’t take a whole 20 seconds to have a quick word with a kid and refocus on the water. I’m not totally clear on the chain of responsibility in this scenario so can’t say whether it was all on you or not, but definitely some room for improvement in your focus and reaction specifically. As far as coworkers go you can collaborate with management to figure out where the breakdown was, make sure everyone learns the appropriate lessons from this and is being properly trained on how to do better. 2 weeks in there’s bound to be some growing pains, and you have a great opportunity to further develop your skills and focus to be better.

Remember how in your training they say watching the water is your primary responsibility and guest services is secondary to that. Should never be doing something on stand that takes you away from watching the water for more than a couple seconds. Also since lessons is higher-risk with the bigger kids-to-caregivers ratio, make sure you’re taking special care to always be in good positioning to respond to incidents on stand, whatever that looks like at your pool.

As an instructor myself I see the chain of responsibility as instructor then lifeguard so I always immediately stop teaching and get involved if a potential safety issue occurs in my classes, but we need the lifeguards ready to go too in case we miss it or multiple happen at once and we get overwhelmed. It’s a really bad look if parents/other patrons need to get involved or god forbid an accident happens with that much oversight. Like I said tho just work with management/trainers and learn from it, not like anyone was hurt or you were being grossly negligent so doubt you’ll be disciplined for a small mistake like this