What are your thoughts!

[Scott M]

While diving on our trip to Ambergris I witnessed the follow event and thought I should share....

16 divers per boat, two groups of 8 for diving. Our group of 8 divers, all came together so we stayed as a group for the week. On the other side the players changed day to day. This one particular day the boat had a mother and her son (12 y/o)diving in the other group. After our dive we were gearing down when the son comes up and walks to his seat shaking his head. "I did bad, I did really bad" " I've got DCS" "I did really bad". My buddy and I look at each other and not wanting to step on any toes we just kind of waited for his mom or someone to ask what happened. He kept muttering the same thing................Since no one is paying attention to the kid, I bite, what happened son? "I dove shallow then deep, I got DCS", I ask, do you feel OK? "ya". About this time Mom chimes in and says you did fine your back on the boat don't worry about it. OK, moms in it now so we go back to what we were doing. Couple minutes pass and we over hear him telling another person from their group he went to 91' and wanted to keep going, all he kept saying was I want to dive deeper. Mom confirms there depth and says oh ya he's our dare devil just wants to keep diving deeper with a motherly giggle and this is just his 5th dive! :shakehead :shakehead

 

[Kim]

Well I don't really know whether you could really interfere but I might try to find a way to delicately ask Mum if he really understood the difference between DCS and narcosis.....and what the implications might be.

Always hard though...butting in....

 

[REII]

12 years old, his 5th dive, and he was at 91', and wanted to go deeper? If the mother doesn't sound too worried about it, it is hard to get involved. I doubt your advice would be appreciated.

And yes, I'd be willing to bet the kid had narcosis. Problem is at that age I doubt he knows how to handle it.

TOM

 

[Scotty g]

From start to finish, i think i would have chimed in (and backed off) the exact way that you did.

What was the divemaster(s)/captain doing? What was the young guy's cert level?

Best to leave alone like you did but shame on the mother.

Scotty

 

[Scott M]

It was a tough call on wether or not to butt in, for a bit I thought about approaching it by asking some question to get to them to realize the gravity of what just happened but then thought better of it. We kept our eye on him for a bit to be sure he was OK with out saying much but it wasn't easy. To me it was just a simple case of the mother being clueless. The son well he is 12 I wouldn't expect him to fully understand the implications, at 12 it's moms job to protect him. From what I could tell they were both just recently OW certified, as in that week.

As for the DM and captain, they did not overhear the conversation. I wasn't on the dive so I don't know what the DM did and did not see which leads to another set of issues.

 

[fairybasslet]

Hmm. That is a hard one. If the mom has such a cavalier attitude I doubt there is much you can do. But I think if I had overheard it, I would have tried to talk to her privately about my concern. I mean, if something happened to the kid and I never said anything, I would feel awful. One think about my kid, a dare devil he's not. I have to convince him to do deep dives 'cause he's kind of afraid of them, and he's 16. In Bonaire, we were at 90+ feet and he's frantically pointing to his computer indicted we "only" had 6 minutes of no-deco time left.

 

[torrey]

It kinda sounds like the kid may be looking for somebody to tell him "oh no, you did fine" so he can push it even further next time. If it was me, I probably would have quizzed him on why he thought he had dcs, what kind of safety-stops he did, etc. If his mom is clueless too, then it might be 2 lives you save before they narc and go drifting off into the depths.

 

[boulderjohn]

If the kid said he had DCS, I believe I would have used that statement as a reason to intervene and begin an evaluation. I would have looked for signs and symptoms, the latter of which requires quizzing the child. I would have asked how he feels, and I would ask about his dive details. If the mother tried to step in, I would tell her that DCS is potentially very serious, and it is important to make sure he is OK.

If I determined that the kid actually meant narcosis, I would have explained the difference to him, and he probably would have gotten a quick message on the dangers of deep diving at both his age and experience level.

Now, if the mother got real pushy about it, I would probably back off once I determined that the child was not currently in danger.

IMO, the DM should be actively involved in the case, but I can't guarantee it would do any good. I have been on boats where the DM's would have been proactively all over that situation. I have been on boats where they would have shrugged off any attempt to intervene. In Ambergris Caye this past summer, I was stunned when I saw a family of three start a dive with no wet suits (it was warm) but wearing 5 mm gloves. They used the gloves to climb the coral on the reefs. (Why use bouyancy when you have hands to control your depth?) The DM watched without comment. My own words were not appreciated, but the DM clearly had a "it's your dive, do what you want" attitude. Maybe it's the norm there.

 

[LittleBug]

See, I would have immediately reported this to the dive master. (Maybe that's b/c I am studying my rescue text so intently now.) I seriously would start treating this as a rescue situation. Ask the kid questions, get more info, report all that to the dive master. I would leave the parent out of it at this point, b/c the parent was the person who let this happen in the first place b/c she may not have encouraged her kid to dive the plan.

 

[Jarrett]

I feel like its none of my business how someone else raises their child, but being that the mother is a new diver, I would probably strike up a conversation with her about how long she and her son had been certified. Where they got certified, how many dives they had done so far.

Through that conversation I would ask if they covered DCS and junior open water depth limits during that certification class. If not, I would offer the info I am aware of. If she was not interested in hearing it, I would try to politely end the conversation.