Teen Daughter Draging Her Feet

[dive_lover88]

I am 17,got certified last x'mas.I agree that it may be her friends,i also took up diving due to my friend...however after the 1st dive in the water,i got hooked and loved it. I swore that nobody...neither my parents,relatives or friends can dissate me from diving,only God can do that.Not many of my peers are willing to go diving,i also get teased for being a diver.
My dive club in school is also mostly guys who are really passionate about diving,i can see that most of my peers are bound by their friends and they are only willing to go and join something that others join even if they don't like that activity.

 

[frogoutofwater]

She also might be having a body image issue. Is she comfortable wearing a bathing suit in public? I would have been comfortable doing that at age 12 or 13, but then I hit an awkward stage and wouldn't have wanted anyone to see me in a bathing suit for - oh, about 25 years - and then I stopped caring. Even if she's slim, she still might feel uncomfortable. And who was in her class? Worst case scenario might be for there to be a pair of reasonably good looking guys (students, divemasters or instructors) in her class (she might be worried that they're going to stare at her and laugh), and for her to lack a partner at all, or a partner who could help her feel less self-conscious (e.g. a family member, another woman, etc).

I signed up on my own for my dive course and I remember feeling a little self-conscious in the pool (at the age of 39). And then I felt even more self-conscious when I realized I was going to do a series of partner skills, either with one of the two guys who had started the class without a partner or the incredibly loud-mouthed, gum-cracking woman who refused to pay attention to the instructor and didn't want to practise the skills properly. I'm not sure which would have been worse: (1) having some strange guy stick his head between my knees and propel me around the pool for one of the buddy tow exercises, or (2) having to propel the incredibly unappealing woman around the pool in this position ...

 

[MikeFerrara]

My son loved diving and still does. My daughter was never very interested. She went through with her certification but I think she did one dive afterwards. Some people just don't really want to dive and I don't see any sense in pushing. Notice how small of a percentage of the population are divers.

 

[mongoose]

Hey, any advice from you younger divers as to what motivated you to get into diving and why your diving (girls especially). It seems like my daughter (14) is procrastinating on finishing her OW class. All she has left is pool and dives. Any suggestion on motivating her let me know.

Dad

I would not do any pushing or motivating. If it was school or soccer or something that would be one thing. But scuba... IMHO, no person should be diving unless they are absolutely chomping at the bit to do it.

Hell, just ask her, straight up, if she's nervous about the whole scuba diving thing, and why. If it's something silly like "I'm afraid of how my hair will look", or "This guy at school, Blake, doesn't like scuba divers", then set things straight. But if she's nervous about the water...don't push.

Just my 2psi, bro...

--'Goose

 

[DementialFaith]

Wow, I always joke about how getting getting a loved one into diving just because you're nito it is one of the worst reason for diving...

It's like my dad trying to get me into playing golf and off surfing. For all the parents out there, if your kids aren't into a certain sport and you push it, chances are, her/she will never like or excel in that sport, so why bother? Of course, you can still sit down and talk to them about why and how, but the choice is still theirs.

 

[isurus]

you said she's only got the pool and dives left to do - sounds like she's only been doing the boring stuff so far! with hindsight a try-dive type thing may have been the incentiviser she needs (of course you may have done this already) but perhaps emphasising how its just about to get fun might help. I started when I was 14 now 25 after being sold on snorkelling with my Dad in our (quite large) garden pond.

Don't push though she'll just push back.

 

[Redshift]

Could she be scared of the in-water training?

 

[CBulla]

She should check out http://scubaducks.com/

 

[Ishie]

Teased about diving? Wow. When I was in high school, I tried to get certified, did really well in the pool, and then had my tonsils out instead of doing my checkout dives (grrrr). Wasn't able to get back in ($$) so had to wait until I was 23, and have been diving at every opportunity since.

In high school, I knew a girl whose parents were marine biologists and she dived regularly. She always seemed far more together than other kids, and seemed to take a lot less seriously. Now that I'm diving I understand that more. You're trained to deal calmly with life threatening situations. It seems to put things like being dumped or hearing gossip about you in a much more realistic perspective, so things didn't bother her as much, and as such, she was viewed as "cool" with cool and interesting stories, thus fairly popular.

It seems like kids have to be in it for the right reasons though. If they're doing it for someone else, or doing it to get something, there's really no point, but when they're doing it to love it, something else entirely.

The 14 year old who joined my buddy and I on a night dive in the Philippines was very much in the latter category. His dad had been diving for sometime as his "therapy" as he called it. At one point, the 14 year old, who had not previously expressed an interest, approached him and said he wanted to try it, so the dad got him cert'd in Hawaii, and those four dives were the only he'd done before the Philippines. Doing the night dive with the kid (dad was on shore, apparently pacing nervously) was wonderful because despite his 'teen cool; no show emotions', his excitement was obvious and infectuous.

 

[popje]

Why couldn't I have had a father like you???!!! Mine wouldn't allow me!!!
Anyway, observing the female adolescent students my colleagues and I come into contact with, it seems that having a young and attractive male instructor plays a vital role in motivating learning.
Of course, I understand fully if that's not an option you want to consider...