Teaching my daughter scuba diving?

[Bob DBF]

Now thats the way to whack a hornets nest.

My daughter was away in college when the SCUBA bug bit her and was certified without my involvement.

On the other hand, my dad and I learned to SCUBA dive with a book and minimal dive gear, one set for both of us, so I have little or no room to comment negatavily. Be carefull, one can drown in a few inches of water.



Bob
---------------------------
I may be old, but I'm not dead yet.

 

[bpotkin]

Spectrum, thank you for your measured words of wisdom.

 

[Quero]

I'm guessing you taught your daughter to drive also. Didn't you understand how that belittles all the driving instructors in the world somehow making them seem less important.

You may think you're being very clever with this quip, but as a matter of fact, it's an interesting comparison. My son and daughter finished high school outside the US in countries where the minimum driving age is 18. Therefore they didn't have the opportunity to learn to drive--from anyone at all--before they enrolled in universities in the US and needed drivers' licenses. I could have taught them to drive (they're smart and physically competent people), and they could have gone for their road tests on that basis according to the laws of the states they would be living in. However, I learned that insurance rates on the cars I also had to buy them would be cut in half if they were to take a drivers' education class from a professionally rated instructor. Just because a person knows how to drive doesn't make them a competent driving instructor (at least according to insurance statistics); knowing a foreign language doesn't make a person a language teacher; knowing how to dive doesn't prepare a person to teach somebody else how to dive.

Your daughter may have good pool skills, but you risk offending her future instructor if she is too competent without benefit of his skill and knowledge. Confidence is good, and pool practice is good, but be discreet, especially with the instructor that will sign her C-card, about how 'advertising' much 'instruction' you have given her.

It's not so much a question of causing offense, but instead of creating wrong habits that just have to be unlearned. I've taught lots of people with their loved ones at the pool and on the boat with us, and the misconceptions that many of these certified divers have, and the advice they give the students based on their lack of understanding, is sometimes jaw-dropping. There's no way I would simply accept informal instruction of this sort simply on the word of the person who delivered it, and it has nothing to do with ego.

In fact, even when we accept a student as a referral from another professional instructor, we are required to assess readiness before going forward in the completion of the course. If a student comes into class with greater readiness, the progress is faster and the course moves smoothly--all instructors enjoy working with students who are "easy" and get through the material effortlessly. However, as a precaution we do have to first begin with the notion that a student with prior "instruction" (regardless of how that instruction was gained) may not have complete mastery of the knowledge and skills--if during the course of the skill-development sessions the student demonstrates competence, that will determine the pace and structure of the subsequent sessions in the course. If a student such as the OP's daughter came to me for instruction, we'd repeat everything. It might go pretty quickly, but we'd still repeat it all.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

To the OP.... What skills are you lacking that make you unwilling to take her in the Ocean? Seriously, what? If you are confident you can teach her to dive in a pool, why can't you adequately prepare her for the Ocean? MAYBE if you lack the confidence to take her diving in the ocean, you shouldn't be teaching her in the pool either?

 

[coldwatercanada]

IMO There is no problem taking your daughter in the pool unless she gets hurt or injured. I mean 50-99 dives doesn't make you an expert by any means but it doesnt make you a fool either. I guess if your willing to deal with injury or even death as much as your willing to deal with success and having a daughter who can own the course, who are any of us to judge otherwise? you said your going to take her to get certified and as long as it all goes good and she makes it to the course any problems she has should get solved. Diving is a dangourse sport conducted in a safe manner thats all.

 

[GrumpyOldGuy]

I think the biggest risk is if your daughter gains so much confidence that she does not wait for proper instruction before heading out to an OW dive vs.. limiting herself to 1 on 1 in a pool with you. Once the scuba bug gets someone, it's hard to wait that long.

 

[bpotkin]

Quero, I understand that you have no way of knowing how good of a job i've done teaching my Daughter. With that being said, I have seen newly certified divers with their tanks falling off their bcds, with no real understanding of a buddy check, not familiar with their rental gear etc. etc. Many courses have 1 day of pool work and 2 days of ocean diving and 5 students in the class. How much really sinks in,
in the typical Ow class. My Daughter has set up her own personal gear over 30 times. She had done over 20 buddy checks and has had conversations about what happens if your tank valve is not turned on, If your inflator hose is not connected, If your BCD is not inflated upon entering the water, etc. etc. She can clear her mask, remove and replace, swim without a mask, remove and replace her gear, etc. etc. She has done all of the drills over and over again. I may have taught her
some bad habits, maybe, however she has gained experience. We have also had hours of conversations with the OW book cracked open. As I mentioned, I will be turning her over to an Instructor for her certification. Do you really feel she would be better off starting out without any skills or hours of scuba conversations? Even though I am not an instructor, I feel I can intelligently go over information
contained in the Ow book. Most of it is not rocket science. We are having fun practicing in our 8 foot deep pool. As I mentioned, she will be taking a formal OW course. I think she will have more fun and less stress when she does take the class. I'm sure she will be a pleasure for her instructor.

 

[Scuba_Noob]

Quero, I understand that you have no way of knowing how good of a job i've done teaching my Daughter. With that being said, I have seen newly certified divers with their tanks falling off their bcds, with no real understanding of a buddy check, not familiar with their rental gear etc. etc. Many courses have 1 day of pool work and 2 days of ocean diving and 5 students in the class. How much really sinks in,
in the typical Ow class. My Daughter has set up her own personal gear over 30 times. She had done over 20 buddy checks and has had conversations about what happens if your tank valve is not turned on, If your inflator hose is not connected, If your BCD is not inflated upon entering the water, etc. etc. She can clear her mask, remove and replace, swim without a mask, remove and replace her gear, etc. etc. She has done all of the drills over and over again. I may have taught her
some bad habits, maybe, however she has gained experience. We have also had hours of conversations with the OW book cracked open. As I mentioned, I will be turning her over to an Instructor for her certification. Do you really feel she would be better off starting out without any skills or hours of scuba conversations? Even though I am not an instructor, I feel I can intelligently go over information contained in the Ow book. Most of it is not rocket science. We are having fun practicing in our 8 foot deep pool. As I mentioned, she will be taking a formal OW course. I think she will have more fun and less stress when she does take the class. I'm sure she will be a pleasure for her instructor.

You sound dead set on this course of action, and it seems as if you're looking for validation with this thread. There's really no point in this thread if all you're going to do is praise those who agree with you and defend yourself against those who don't. You've already started teaching your daughter in the pool, and it's unlikely you're going to stop because of people who disagree on this thread.

With your dive experience and without proper instructional training, I think that you should wait a few months until she gets proper training or until you get proper training to teach. There's no point in rushing and risking problems when she has her whole dive career ahead of her. But it sounds like you're still going to do it anyway.

Just change the date of the instruction to an earlier date. You can always dive with her all the time after she gets certified, using your experience to build upon the lessons the instructors taught her.

 

[Quero]

Quero, I understand that you have no way of knowing how good of a job i've done teaching my Daughter. With that being said, I have seen newly certified divers with their tanks falling off their bcds, with no real understanding of a buddy check, not familiar with their rental gear etc. etc. Many courses have 1 day of pool work and 2 days of ocean diving and 5 students in the class. How much really sinks in,
in the typical Ow class. My Daughter has set up her own personal gear over 30 times. She had done over 20 buddy checks and has had conversations about what happens if your tank valve is not turned on, If your inflator hose is not connected, If your BCD is not inflated upon entering the water, etc. etc. She can clear her mask, remove and replace, swim without a mask, remove and replace her gear, etc. etc. She has done all of the drills over and over again. I may have taught her
some bad habits, maybe, however she has gained experience. We have also had hours of conversations with the OW book cracked open. As I mentioned, I will be turning her over to an Instructor for her certification. Do you really feel she would be better off starting out without any skills or hours of scuba conversations? Even though I am not an instructor, I feel I can intelligently go over information
contained in the Ow book. Most of it is not rocket science. We are having fun practicing in our 8 foot deep pool. As I mentioned, she will be taking a formal OW course. I think she will have more fun and less stress when she does take the class. I'm sure she will be a pleasure for her instructor.

You have misinterpreted my posts. I didn't ever say that you had done a poor job introducing your daughter to scuba. I only said that if I were her instructor, I wouldn't take your word for it that she's already trained, regardless of your defensive posture and insistence that you know how to do teach her more thoroughly than an instructor would be able to do in a standard class setting. I would repeat everything in the course. After all, it would be my signature certifying her, and to me my signature on that document has meaning. As a matter of fact, I don't take even referrals at face value--I assess readiness (as we are required to do regardless). For all I know, your daughter could be a natural who would pick up scuba skills on her own with out without your help (or mine, for that matter). Or you could be a natural when it comes to teaching. But we don't know that, and we cannot make assumptions when it's a persons LIFE that we have a duty of care to guard. If she were my student, she would repeat everything.

With all due respect, you seem to be supremely confident in your ability to teach scuba, but you don't know what you don't know. I'm pretty sure that I could easily throw some questions at you that some of my students have asked which you would most likely be unable to address based on your understanding of diving theory, and I'd be able to describe some issue an OW student has had during confined water training that you wouldn't know how to address in order to get that student past the roadblock.

If you want your daughter to have a solid course so that she doesn't look like some of those OW divers you describe, the solution is to carefully select her instructor to ensure that her training will be of high quality rather than trying to fill some imagined gaps in her future instruction before the instruction has even taken place.

 

[phoenix31tt]

agreed with scuba_noob.. whats the real purpose of this thread? seems like you've made up your mind and would continue either way... this is my approach: let her get certified.. and then you work with her to build real world skill and experience...

gaining that experience and then acing a course can cause serious over-confidence and no matter how much you do pool drills real life scenarios are totally different... over-confidence can cause people to enter scenarios they think they can handle when they really cant (as was the case when edd sorenson saved that girl from in a cavern)

just my 2c