Beautifully written, but I do not think that a little guy of three years old (barely out of his day nappies) would have many of the thoughts expressed here. This would be more apt for an older child.
The story is gripping and the suspense is kept all along.

I agree that some of the wording of the thoughts seems advanced for three-year-olds, but it was easy for me to imagine a 3-yr-old thinking something of the same idea.  I’m daddy to a pretty advanced one myself and I know she thinks about stuff that much.

So I’m not clear whether this kid is still with us.  On one hand, it seems that he fell out of the window and is incapable of considering anything worse than mom and dad being mad at him, so the story ends with his last thoughts.  On the other hand, maybe the author was just toying with us using the ambiguous description of how he got unstuck from the porthole.

The ambiguity of the ending doesn’t add anything for me.  I suppose I may have written it like that if only to get people to think more.

Anyway, I really liked the story leading up to the ending.  And maybe it’s only ambiguous to people who think too much like me.  I keep reading it over and over trying to figure out if it’s supposed to be obvious that the author just tricked us with the penultimate paragraph.

As a mother of two boys I would like to think that the parents saved him in the last minute. Otherwise I would not be able to sleep! The last para. confirms this, I think. He smells his mother’s perfume and feels her embrace and hopes this will last forever, as he knows the reckoning is imminent.

Should he have fallen into the ocean, the last sentence “… he was really in for it” would have to be different. The experience of drowning, the loneliness and fear would not have conjured up the thought of parental punishment (unless he had former experience of severe parental disciplinary action) - it would be of fear and loneliness and the wish that his loved-ones would be there.

The more I read this the better I like it - a real short story with an ambiguous ending. However, the image of a three-year old calmly contemplating how long he would be able to survive in the ocean does not fit. I hope the author will think about this. Also, the thought of a father telling a three year old child of sailors shooting sharks with machine guns as a practice for war is - a little far fetched if not that tiny bit immoral. Having said that I must immediately but regrettably concede that war is with us wherever we go - most of all in toy shops and computer games where war games and shooting toys are the big money grabbers.

Wow....

Well done.