Certifying children

[ScubaGypsy]

Jeez Louise people, learn how to read what I said and stop injecting your own spin into things.

I am neither sad nor jaded but I am the Forensic Consultant for the L.A. County Coroner for scuba fatalities so, as Don pointed out, I've been privvy to the details of a number of deaths. So I've seen things and my opinions and perspective are going to be different from yours (as Lorenzoid pointed out generically).

I am not the Scuba Police (nor did I ever remotely make as assertion of such) but am simply pointing out that there are issues involved here that, in my 35 years of teaching people how to dive, parents don't think about. Your kid, your choice. You are welcome to make decisions I wouldn't and vice-versa.

In addition to the incident I mentioned in #3, I've also seen a family torn apart when their 14-year-old son died while diving with his father a week after certification essentially because he couldn't clear his mask, embolized, and died. So while you're welcome to think whatever you want and emphasize or ignore whatever facts you'd like to, I'm not making this stuff up out of thin air and my opinions come from what I've seen in real-life scenarios.

And while I think there's an interesting discussion to be had about what the minimum cert age should be, this thread probably isn't the place to have that discussion. So we should either move all of these comments to their own thread &/or stop hijacking this one. My originial comment was simply meant to be a garnish to the discussion, not the main course.

- Ken

Flaunt the fatality credentials all that you want, how many folks that were certified when they were children are now living adult lives dedicated to the understanding and promotion of future protections of the ocean and waterways? Your discouraging remarks towards children being certified are jaded due to a miniscule percentage of fatalities that have occurred instead of the overwhelming number of success stories for lifelong diving as well as the focus for ones life work. Please look at the bigger picture here where we are trying to raise future generations to be thinking and contributing members of society instead of insular, society dependent droids.

How many adult deaths have caused families to be torn apart because of an easily avoidable error on the adult? The specific incident of this thread is a prime example.

I do agree with you that the discussion of children diving should be moved to a separate thread. I disagree with your garnish as it is irrelevant in this incident.

 

[nimoh]

Flaunt the fatality credentials all that you want, how many folks that were certified when they were children are now living adult lives dedicated to the understanding and promotion of future protections of the ocean and waterways? Your discouraging remarks towards children being certified are jaded due to a miniscule percentage of fatalities that have occurred instead of the overwhelming number of success stories for lifelong diving as well as the focus for ones life work. Please look at the bigger picture here where we are trying to raise future generations to be thinking and contributing members of society instead of insular, society dependent droids.

How many adult deaths have caused families to be torn apart because of an easily avoidable error on the adult? The specific incident of this thread is a prime example.

I do agree with you that the discussion of children diving should be moved to a separate thread. I disagree with your garnish as it is irrelevant in this incident.

Get a grip. He said he isn't a fan of teaching children. He is not launching a campaign to get it outlawed.

 

[FinnMom]

If you want to minimize the risk of having a child see a parent die, they should avoid ever being in the same car. Thats the really, really big one.

Horseback riding and challenging downhill ski hills are also a no-no, but recreational scuba and commercial flying are not likely to be a problem.

I'm not flippant about this; I went to mom's funeral age 9. But I also understand statistics.

 

[Lorenzoid]

Flaunt the fatality credentials all that you want, how many folks that were certified when they were children are now living adult lives dedicated to the understanding and promotion of future protections of the ocean and waterways? Your discouraging remarks towards children being certified are jaded due to a miniscule percentage of fatalities that have occurred instead of the overwhelming number of success stories for lifelong diving as well as the focus for ones life work. Please look at the bigger picture here where we are trying to raise future generations to be thinking and contributing members of society instead of insular, society dependent droids.

How many adult deaths have caused families to be torn apart because of an easily avoidable error on the adult? The specific incident of this thread is a prime example.

I do agree with you that the discussion of children diving should be moved to a separate thread. I disagree with your garnish as it is irrelevant in this incident.

You've got a lot of rhetorical "how manys" in there. I don't know how many. If you have the statistics, please share. Even if I knew exactly how many, I suspect the conclusions to be drawn from the statistics would not be as obvious to me as they apparently are to you.

 

[Basking Ridge Diver]

Ah. Ok, makes sense. I still don't think I'd ever leave my kid on the boat and dive solo. Dive another day solo, or bring him with me. I don't fear diving solo, I've done it a couple of times in terrible vis losing a buddy, or during a OW checkout that I went with and was looking for an article why the students did their thing. That being said, I consider it risky all and all. And unless I'm going to pick up some gold bullion, or diamonds, or something like that, it probably can wait.

I had to when I went down to retrieve the anchor - I tied us in on the first dive - expected to do a second dive and the weather turned on our SIT... So you never know when you may need to solo...

 

[redacted]

Ah. Ok, makes sense. I still don't think I'd ever leave my kid on the boat and dive solo. Dive another day solo, or bring him with me. I don't fear diving solo, I've done it a couple of times in terrible vis losing a buddy, or during a OW checkout that I went with and was looking for an article why the students did their thing. That being said, I consider it risky all and all. And unless I'm going to pick up some gold bullion, or diamonds, or something like that, it probably can wait.

If you lost a buddy, then you were not diving solo. You were buddy diving and became separated. That can be a dangerous situation if you are not prepared for solo diving.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

>snip<
At the risk of inflaming ScubaGypsy again, the kid is 16. NAUI, PADI, SSI, & GUE all have 18 as the mininum age for cave-diving certification. No exceptions that I saw. SDI/TDI/ERDI and IANTD also say 18 but will drop to 15 with parental consent. I'm curious to know where the cert came from.

Even though the kid was not physically injured in this accident (emotional may be something else), more to the point of my personal discomfort, why does a 16 year-old "need" to be cave-certified (if indeed he was). Have we lost our minds?

- Ken

 

[PfcAJ]

Even though the kid was not physically injured in this accident (emotional may be something else), more to the point of my personal discomfort, why does a 16 year-old "need" to be cave-certified (if indeed he was). Have we lost our minds?

- Ken

why does anyone "need" to dive at all, regardless of age?

 

[Rick Murchison]

A little personal perspective...
I well remember my father's swimming instructional technique... swim or drown, it was! We all chose to swim ('course he was there just in case).
I honestly can't remember whether my initial breathing underwater experiences were on Scuba or with a float-mounted hookah system supplying air, but I reckon I was about 12, and we played with both. No parents or instructors involved, other than the older kids telling us "hold your breath and you die."
As a teenager I taught swimming, lifesaving, canoeing, horseback riding, waterskiing... I earned my CFI (Certified Flight Instructor) when I was 19. Didn't get Scuba certified until it became a necessity to get air - I was 23 then.
My own children and grandchildren (except the youngest, who's 18 months and will learn to swim this summer) we taught to swim as toddlers, to snorkel soon thereafter and to dive as teens, getting certified at 12 when that was the limit and 10 when the agencies dropped to that age.
Until they earn their life guarding certs at 16, our diving philosophy with the kids is "they are children; they are not buddies" and we dive them with at least one parent and another well qualified and experienced adult diver. The adults and the child fully understand who's who, and in particular the child is thoroughly briefed and understands that his/her responsibility should there be an emergency with one of the adults is to safely get him/her self to the surface & let the adults handle the adults.
My children are cavern divers - grandchildren aren't 18 yet. I feel cavern diver and stress/rescue diver are essential courses for a diver to be a top-notch, safe diver.
Though children are children, given the opportunity to learn and to exercise sound judgement and take responsibility they can prove quite remarkable.
So... my position training children in Scuba? Done right, remembering that they are children and not buddies, and that they require monitoring and supervision and guidance, I'm all for it.

Rick

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

... Though children are children, given the opportunity to learn and to exercise sound judgement and take responsibility they can prove quite remarkable.
So... my position training children in Scuba? Done right, remembering that they are children and not buddies, and that they require monitoring and supervision and guidance, I'm all for it.

Rick

1+.

The point Ken brings up is really important, and it is crucial that parents who want their kids to dive, especially young kids, give some serious thought to.

I have three kids (now adults!) who were certified at young ages... the youngest at age 10. All confined water dives were done in the ocean (no pool to use), with a fair amount of surge.... but I digress.

Rick's response is the correct one in my opinion, for those parents who fully "get" the point that Ken is making. Children can often surprise even their parents and be quite remarkable in their abilities, but they are not buddies until they reach a certain level of maturity, physical strength and judgement. But that does not mean, within reason, they should be completely excluded from backcountry hiking, scuba, mountain biking, rock climbing and other high-risk endeavors.

Best wishes.