Diving effects on kids

[fins wake]

... superb post!

Until they get quit a bit older, I respectfully suggest that you think three times before you take the three of you together down to depths that deep. If something happens down there to one of the kids, your ability to respond to both of them simultaneously will be severely constrained.

Good points, all of them. Incidentally, the youngest diver I've ever heard of was a guy who started scuba diving at 6 (with his instructor parents at a 60's style dive hippy camp). Bit extreme, I guess ...

Therefore a PFO is a significant risk factor in diving and may be a higher risk factor for DCI.

Mmmm ... not necessarily. There's a lot of research being done on this at DAN Europe (mainly researchers at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in conjunction with e.g. the Belgian Navy, as recently reported in DAN's Alert Diver). The conclusions are still tentative, but it would appear that the risks are in no direct relation to a PFO and would appear smaller than was thought.

At present DAN Europe are looking to set up a volunteer program of some 4 000 divers to ensure statistical validity. Maybe we'll only know for sure then.

As for the connection with children and diving, I think DocIntrepid and others have put forward equally good reasons for not taking young children deep which have nothing to do with possible osteonecrosis or possibly risks from PFO's ...

 

[H2OHead]

pasley,

I’m quite familiar with the term. My point was that the incidence of diving related injuries doesn’t seem to correlate with the incidence people walking around with ASD’s. I’m not in the business of tracking injuries, but seeing that 10, 15 to 30 percent (depends on the study you reference) of the people I know haven’t stroked should be something to wonder about. Since the defect isn’t related to a disease process, one could assume that the diving population is representative of the population at large with defects and that they would be in keeping with the numbers of left to right and right to left shunts. I may be oversimplifying it, but I just don’t see a third of the diving population dropping dead from emboli. I’m assuming if the accident incidence were in keeping with the actual number of people with defects, we would be reading more about it and perhaps seeing it on the evening news.

Fins Wake,

I’d be interested in learning more about the study you mentioned.

Back to the topic at hand. Good posts by all and I’m glad to see folks wrote more than, “just don’t do it”. Perhaps if you truly care about your kids, you’ll appreciate that diving requires a great deal of mental assets they aren’t yet equipped with and by denying them the opportunity to dive, you may be truly showing them how much you care.

 

[Dr Deco]

Dear Readers:

PFO and Diving

In the studies that I have performed while at NASA, it appears that the simple presence of a PFO is insufficient for DCS. Several conditions are required (and have been discussed at earlier times:

• the PFO must be hemodynamically significant, that is the size and position in the atrial wall appears to make a difference,
• there must naturally be gas bubbles present in the venous system to arterialize; most recreational dives do not result in many bubbles in the venous return;
• the position of the diver (recumbent or erect) is important since the bubbles arterialize better (that is, the normal left-to-right pressure gradient is more easily reversed) in the recumbent than the standing, erect body position.

Speculation

Some of this is speculative and supported by some evidence. These concepts are not universally recognized, but I do believe them to be correct.

Dr Deco :doctor:

Readers, please note the next class in Decompression Physiology :grad:
http://wrigley.usc.edu/hyperbaric/advdeco.htm

 

[Big Blue One]

There may be medical risks but these are hypothetical rather than accepted factual at this point.

Psychology is a big one - you do have to assess your child's ability to act sensibly under stress. Like the previous authors notes about mental development I don't know many 12 year olds mature enough to dive. My son is one who is. His best friend (who I tactfully prevented from doing the training) clearly isn't.

How far are you prepared to push the envelope just to look at pretty fish and coral though.

Again my son is physically fit and well developed - swims 2km+ three times a week and wears size 44 shoes !! (probably a bit of growth retardation would be useful right now)
He is also very comfortable in water and clearly from his training has excellent bouyancy control.
He has called a dive he didn't feel comfortable with when the going got tough.

He has is AOW. I will NOT let him do his Rescue until he is 15 and clearly haul a large adult body out of the water and has more reasoning skills.

So what he gets now is close supervision on comfortable dives. Some slightly challenging experiences with very easy bail-out options. And lots of skills practise such as SMB deployment OOA drills, and we talk alot through some of the more difficult and technical aspects of diving.

I think the agencies are kidding themselves if they think anyone under 12 should dive outside of a swimming pool. Get them snorkelling first and then as they will learn good water familiarisation and can do lots of the fish identification skills anyway.

At the end of the day you are the parent and get to decide what situations and risks you allow (note: not 'push') your children to accept. Do this as an informed parent and don't blame anyone else for any resulting incidents and enjoy whatever level of experience you allow them to attain.

 

[fins wake]

I will NOT let him do his Rescue until he is 15 and clearly haul a large adult body out of the water and has more reasoning skills.

I'm a bit curious here. The Junior Rescue course is very beneficial for people's self-rescue skills, and would probably enhance his dive reasoning capabilities and make him an even safer and better buddy. Even if he won't be able to haul a large adult body out of the water for some years yet, why not let him take it as he's already a Junior AOW? Can it hurt him?

The rest of your post is well-argued and in my mind you're bringing your son on excellently and safely in his diving career. Well done!

 

[carfier]

I am a parent of a 13 year old diver who has been diving since he was 10.
I will have to agree with some of the post that mentioned the fact that we can "teach" our kids what to do and not to do, but what I think will make a difference is really practicing diving skills.
My son and I have spent a lot of time on a local lake with great viz and only 25ft practicing and practicing and practicing our skills and getting confortable. Most of his dives (55) have been done at this place.
He was slowly introduced to ocean dives always staying wihtin depth limits and understanding his capabilities and limitations. On one of these dives (at 50ft) his regulator was accidently knoked out of his mouth. I don't know how many "older" divers would have remebered to "think" and then "act", but this is exactly what my son did. He remained calm recovered his reg, gave me the "OK" and continued diving.
I'm not saying that he was not shaken by loosing his reg, but he did exactly what we had been practicing all this time.
With this said I will assure you that I would never take (nor will he want to) dive under conditions that he is not familiar with, or does not feel confortable with (i.e. low viz, cold water, etc).
I think that every child is different and us as parents need to take diving very seriously when diving with our kids.

 

[Big Blue One]

fins wake once bubbled...
I'm a bit curious here. The Junior Rescue course is very beneficial for people's self-rescue skills, and would probably enhance his dive reasoning capabilities and make him an even safer and better buddy.

Good point Fins and not sure I won't cave in as 15 is still a long 2 years off.

Will depend alot more on him and how much he embraces more training and diving

 

[zeN||]

So it APPEARS there is insufficient data to determine if scuba has additional negative effects on children, everyone agrees maturity is an important factor, and who better to determine that than the parents Z

 

[redseal]

As promised, I am at the DAN conference in NC and have asked about this issue to the experts.

All are in agreement that there does not appear to be a medical issue with children diving, from a physical or physiological point of view. There are NO DATA showing an increased incidence of injury nor of DCI in kids. The only caveat that was mentioned was desire to dive and maturity to dive, issues that are not restricted to kids (how many adults do you know who lack maturity and insight??)

So, as long as you and your kids stay within the limits to which you have trained, there doesn't appear to be any medical contraindication to healthy mature 12 and ups diving.

Bon voyage!!

 

[Kendall Raine]

One perspective, among the many excellent ones already presented, that hasn't really been explored directly in this thread is the role of the child (young adult) as a buddy. That is, could your child, children, get you and themselves out of trouble if you became incapacitated at depth?

Assuming for this discussion you accept that diving with a self-sufficient and capable buddy is a good idea and inherently preferable to not having one, does diving with a youngster put you in the position of diving with a dependent (non-self-sufficient) diver (no pun intended)? If you were in trouble, could they get both of you out of trouble or would the act of rescuing you place their lives in danger? If so, do you have the right to subject them to that risk? Yes, you can keel over at the wheel of a car with them as passengers, but the stresses (i.e. cardiovascular) of diving are higher than driving a car. It's not just the physical aspects of getting you to safety, either. Could a child respond emotionally to the sight of seeing a parent in trouble at depth in a manner which would maximize not just your chances of survival, but theirs, as well.

I started diving with my father when I was 9. While it doesn't seem to have caused me any harm 35 years later (some might disagree), I know, in retrospect, I was not a competent buddy in the sense that, had there been a serious problem with my father, I might not have been capable of saving us both.