Just needs some opinions..kids diving

[mirage]

i think under 12 is WAY TO YOUNG to be certified. hell most 12 year olds arnt mature enough to handle a stressfull dive, from a psyc pov if mommy or daddy lose it while diving lil billy or lil molly will more then likly lose it.

when padi allowed for 10 year olds to be certifed it made me ill, cause they did it out of MONEY not safety.

 

[DennisW]

Like everyone else, I have an opinion and I am going to give it to you . I have kids that are now 18 and 20 years old. They have both been diving since they were 12. They are both like fish themselves, but they do not have a lot of dives. Why, well we know that nitrogen gets into all body tissues, we also know it gets into the bone. It stands to reason that it will get into developing bone easier than my old hard bones.
Now if my memory is wrong, someone from Diverlink correct me on this next part.
A person that used to regularly post on diverlink had problems with osteoperosis symptoms. She was still pretty young (I believe in her twenties) and attributed the problems with diving a lot and fairly deep since she was 8 yrs old. Her parents owned a dive resort in Roatan, I believe, so she had access daily to diving.
In any case, there have been no scientific studies on the effects of diving on children for obvious reasons (my kids were not going to be subjects, would you let yours?). I limited my kids dive trips to one or two per year and never below 40 fsw.
I hope this helps you with your decision and how you handle the diving afterward. I really wanted my kids to experience the rest of our beautiful world, but I didn't want them to have life long problems from the experience, just good memories.

 

[Ldreamin]

I have 2 children. My son is 19 and daughter is 11. My son has no desire to dive.(not sure where he got that ...definitely not me) Anyway, my daughter has told me since she was 8, "I can't wait to be 12". In other words she is waiting to be a diver. I know PADI lowered the age to 10 then raised it again but she never knew this. I also know there are other agencies that she could be certified at 10. I feel they should be 12 at the least and if I didn't think she was mature enough to handle it at 12 it would be delayed until I felt she was ready. She talks about it all the time and is very much looking forward to her birthday. Personally, I can't wait either! I know I'm going to have a great dive buddy and very much looking forward to mother and daughter dives.

Ldreamin

p.s. I also agree with you Dennis... her depth will be limited too.

 

[Swamp Rat]

And boy would I love to have them dive with me. But it isnt going to happen until they turn at least 12. I couldn't as a parent put my daughters at risk SCUBA diving until they understand the risk involved. I will take them in a pool and let them breath on the octo or in the lake where all we have to do is stand up. But until then They and I will have to wait. There is a lot of variables here and you as a parent have to make the right choice.
Something else is the weight of the equipment to consider. Can they handle it?

 

[detroit diver]

My son was 14 when he was certified, and after reading many posts on this board and others, I'm very glad that we didn't get into this earlier. Just too many unknowns.

My daughter just turned 10, and doesn't have the urge to scuba yet, but I'm dreading the day she does (until she gets older). How do you tell your young ones no? That's a rhetorical question....

 

[Fishkiller]

Questions about a child as a dive buddy? Can they handle the stress or unforseen in the lake or ocean? should they be in the water?

I spent 3 hours watching my son in class, in a swimming pool, with 5 other children. Another father and I after an hour geared up and joined them in the pool, staying clear of the instructor and DM. Alex hasn't stopped bragging that he can balance on one finger in the pool.

I have a year and a half to prepare myself and educate myself so I can be a good dive buddy for my son when he gets certified. I feel it shoud be my responsibility as a parent of a junior diver to not dive in situations or places that could put him at risk, even if the place seems boring to myself it is the saftey of the child first. There should be and are limitations to junior divers and I as a parent I need to stay within those limitations not encouraging my son to go beyond his limits. There will be times that I can dive without my son and go to my limits as and AOW diver. My son knows that he has limits for now he can only dive in a swimming pool with an instructor. When he turns 10 and passes the Cert test he will still have limitations, as he gets older and becomes an adult diver he still will have limitations. The real concern isn't that there are limitations but what you can do WITHIN those limits is where the true enjoyment lies.

 

[mirage]

do i think kids cna dive, sure but what concerns me is the response those kids will have in a bad situation. like if mom or dad freak u/w or get hurt lil billy or suzi will tend to freak out.

yes some RARE kids can handle diving at a young age, some cant. but it all comes down to the instructor, if they feel that kid cant handle it then dont teach them, and if yea do teach them teach them as much as thier lil heads can hold.

but what is sad, is alot of instructors will cave and cert a kid who dont belong u/w yet for teh cash, hell why do you think padi lowered the age, MONEY. sure they will give excuse after excuse bottom line is money.

whats funny is pad's seal team, great idea what sucks is padi's marketing idea is OUTDATED. i mean cmon the whole military angle is so outdated it died out as a marketing fad with gijoe. even though the selling gimmick SUCKS, its a great idea at teh core to getkids into scuba, but inrtoducing them to scuba and cert them is 2 diff things

 

[jmsdiver]

Can kids dive? Sure they can; the technical aspects of diving can essentially be taught to anyone. In the medical field, the paradigm has shifted to teaching the patient to take care of themselves by teaching them the technical aspects of care of their colostomy or I&O catheterization, and so forth. However, what separates the patient from the medical staff is the understanding of theoretical principles and the application thereof. While there is less emphasis on the theoretical aspects of diving and more on the technical skills, I do not believe that children have the necessary responsibility or developmental stages necessary to deal with the risks, stressors, and other rigors of diving.

From a psychosocial perspective, Erikson states that at age 10, children are in the "Industry vs. Inferiority" or Latency stage of development. They want to do things for themselves, importance is put on the need to discover pleasure in being productive and the need to succeed. As most 10 year olds are not being taught things about gas laws and other theory in school at that age, it stands to reason that the dive industry is setting them up to fail. This could lead to feelings of inferiority and lower self-esteem. Furthermore, Piaget states that children of this age are in the Concrete Operations stages, lacking the ability to think abstractly. Can one honestly expect children to understand and apply the theories of diving in practice? Frankly, I want children to enjoy being children, and not place undue demands on their psyche. Why do they need to be divers at this age?

Furthermore, 12 may be too young. As with driving a vehicle, 16 may be too young to get a license. Erikson stage 5 "Fidelity" or "Identitiy vs. Identity Diffusion" states that even the best adjusted of adolescents experiences some role identity diffusion: most boys and probably most girls experiment with minor delinquency. A loose interpretation would be that adolescents take risks. Some theorists point out that in this stage, children feel invincible, that no matter what they do they can not be harmed, thus increase the chance that a risk will be taken. Do we really want young people taking risks underwater? While an adult will make a judgement call as to his/her ability underwater, I do not believe that adolescents can. I know that I did not when I was diving in my teens.

I believe that 14 is good time to start the learning process for diving because a lot of what is covered coincides with their high school education. Also, I believe that the attention span is greatly increased at this age over someone that is younger. Time on task is important in scuba education; I find it difficult to see a 10 year old being able to buckle down for 12-15 hours of clasroom time, 8-10 hours in the pool, and another 8-10 in the open water in the manner that the industry currently teachs: the weekend warrior certification.

The fact that the industry requires a certified parent to dive with them is possibly setting up for disaster. How many parents get certified just to dive with their youngster? Frankly, I think that parents should have a great deal of experience before diving with their young. Furthermore, some proponents are against diving solo, or just lightly support it. If put in a situation, could the child help out the parent? I think that parents are essentially diving solo when diving with their young children, and perhaps they both are diving solo if the parent has barely any experience.

I'm not fully against it( please see my previous post), but I would like to make safe divers, not just divers. Money can not be the only driving force behind the need to make divers; we have to think beyond money. Just because someone can pass the test doesn't mean they have the knowledge and skills necessary to be a safe diver. This is my $1.50 worth of opinion. Cheers!

 

[longwalk]

At my last dive shop we worked through maybe 15 - 20 teenage (12 - 18 yo) students in the PADI BOW classes over the course of four years. Two here, one there . . . you get the idea. My personal observations: attention span of the "Kids are there because the parents are pushing" is nil to somewhere around 8 or 9 nanoseconds - and though it's tough to acknowledge of other divers, that's the reason most of those kids were there.

I met maybe one or two youngsters who were self-motivated and appreciated the required work and were willing to commit to that work to earn the pay-off.

The rest we either spent extra-ordinary amounts of additional time with to get through the pool sessions or we busted them out without certification and sent them home with refunds.

We did our open water work in a quarry - a deep, (60+ feet TYPICAL) dark, COLD quarry - and we ALWAYS had extra trouble with kids on the open water dives. (Not all of the kids, just like some of the adults presented problems, but statistically, the kids presented WAY more problems with open water than the adults.

Best advice - wait until THEY beg, wait until they EARN the cost (TRUE test of the motivation), stay shallow and stay warm (do a resort course down south. . . .if they don't bail there, you can always move on up).

 

[neil]

Excellent discussion. I have not certified any 10 yr. olds, but I have taken a couple on preliminary cert. dives for another instructor. My impression? I will not certify them. This may piss some parents off, but for all the reasons stated in previous posts, it's not a good idea IMO. They have no fear, and that's dangerous. Having had some limited experience with youngsters now, I concur that the lowering of the age may be a real mistake. As a NAUI instructor, I can certify 12 yr olds and that's pushing it for me. Having said that, I've had a couple of 12 yr old students who were exceptional (girls, by the way), but that's not the usual case.
Incidentally, for those of you who are not instructors: PADI originally would allow a whole class of 10-12 year olds, but quickly changed the standard to allow only TWO per class in open water, and the class may not be more than 4 people total. Duh. Don't these people have kids? I don't really mean to get on PADI's case, but I fear this may come back to bite us. Once again, the above is only MHO.

Neil