So you want to take your kid diving...

[DandyDon]

Well hell, I guess this thread is going to fail with so many under the delusion that scuba is no more dangerous than driving, hiking, hunting, etc.

I have less than 500 dives and I have seen 6 others leave by ambulance, 3 barely surviving - just does not compare.

 

[Dive Bug Bit Me]

Agree with the points raised in this thread. However, to my mind diving with a child is probably less dangerous than diving with a poor buddy. With a child you know not to expect help at times of stress, whereas this comes as an unpleasant surprise when diving with a new buddy.

It comes down to risk management, when diving with a new buddy (my daughter is not of diving age yet) I choose an easy diving environment and treat it as a solo dive with someone to share the experience.

If it turns out the new buddy looks competent, then great we move on to more challenging dives. In fact on a recent live aboard, I quickly summed up that of the 14 other divers, I was only prepared to buddy with 6 of them. When they were not available, I was with a staff member.

The point raised of guilt is a difficult one for me. Having a daughter is like having my heart walk around outside my body. If something ever happened to her I would never recover. I can't package her in cotton wool to protect her all her life, so instead I must provide opportunities for her to grow and experience her own life in a controlled setting. A dive in the calm waters of Maui with a 15 foot hard floor is fine by me. A dive over a wall with current in the Galapagos is not going to happen. Again risk management and allowing her to grow in a controlled setting.

 

[scubadobadoo]

Well, this was my initial thought process:

Say I were hiking along the top of a mountain ridge, then just bombed down the open face of it on my snowboard and caught an edge and started tumbling down. Maybe I'll break both my legs, an arm, and get a concussion (for example). What now? I lay there in pain with the possibility of hypothermia. I know I'll have a few hours to live or find rescue. If someone found me, they can rig me up somehow and bring me to safety, and it might just be a painful ride... but I'll live.

Diving scenario: I black out for whatever reason at 100' depth. I can now drown in about a minute. A buddy sees me and decides to bring me up. If there's any air in my lungs, I'll probably have a lung over-expansion, which is deadly - and we'll both get bent - also severly threatening (possible lifelong paralysis) or deadly.

That's where I got my reasoning for things getting very bad very quickly while underwater. A car accident would be more like the snowboarding accident (unless it's an instant death, but I'm guessing instant death in car accidents is a relatively small percentage). You'll still most likely have quite a while to live, whereas in diving, you only have minutes... and you're already in the most foreign and harshest environments for humans.

I hear ya and mostly agree. That said, let's go with the billion number on each side. A billion people diving, how many are going to actually black out (at 100 ft etc...)? Not many. A billion people driving, how many are going to speed and change lanes without their blinker on? Millions daily and you don't even have to be one of those millions daily to be affected by them. My guess is those million driving illegally, like idiots, will kill more people with their relatively small/minor actions than the hand full of people who will blackout (maybe the worst case scenario) while diving.

 

[Dive Bug Bit Me]

Well hell, I guess this thread is going to fail with so many under the delusion that scuba is no more dangerous than driving, hiking, hunting, etc.

I have less than 500 dives and I have seen 6 others leave by ambulance, 3 barely surviving - just does not compare.

Wow, that is one in an ambulance for every 83 or so dives. That is a bad run.

I have just under half of your dives and have not seen anyone I have been in the water with leave in an ambulance (nor a body bag). I certainly have seen my fair share of minor incidents (tanks falling out, panicked divers, lost weight belts, lost kit, OOA, lost buddies, etc) but these were all resolved without incident. If I expand that to include people not on the boat with me, the only injury I have seen requiring an ambulance was some fellow who twisted his ankle jumping off another boat after the dive.

Yes, on a per diver basis, I do believe that diving is more dangerous than driving, playing golf or tennis.

 

[Rhone Man]

We all have to die one day. I hope before that happens my kids get a chance to really live.

I am not a fan of the "wrap your kids in cotton wool and pretend the world isn't scary" approach. My kids may have to watch me die in a scuba accident, or they may see me getting knocked over by a car after dropping them at school. Neither is likely, but it is a chance I'll take. My family and I are not going to live our lives scared of our own shadows until then.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I'm kinda glad I grew up when I did ... back then we were allowed to do stuff without some well-meaning adult wanting to stuff us in a box to keep us safe till adulthood ... maybe if we allowed kids to assume more responsibility for themselves these days, they'd grow up a bit more responsible ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Well hell, I guess this thread is going to fail with so many under the delusion that scuba is no more dangerous than driving, hiking, hunting, etc.

I have less than 500 dives and I have seen 6 others leave by ambulance, 3 barely surviving - just does not compare.

Wow ... I've got over 2700 dives and I haven't seen that many diving accidents ... hopefully those weren't your dive buddies ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[scubadobadoo]

Well hell, I guess this thread is going to fail with so many under the delusion that scuba is no more dangerous than driving, hiking, hunting, etc.

I have less than 500 dives and I have seen 6 others leave by ambulance, 3 barely surviving - just does not compare.

Drive 500 hours on an LA freeway and you will see way more than 6 ambulances.

 

[Cacia]

KIds that learn to manage risk are safer people. They learn that by seeing you model it, and by emulating you. You are constantly discussing how you manage your risk, by beginning with identifying what the actual probablities are, etc.

Shallow water blackout is a good example of where to start. Assessing currents, conditions, the very basic physics of lung injuries---you can knock off the biggies fairly easily.

My personal favorite, that PADI never teaches, size up the captain, his boat and the fuel tank before a drift drive. Teach the kids to think for themselves, never to go with the group and assume somebody else has planned everything. Don't let others define a risk that is realistically much further down the list, while ignoring the obvious ones.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Or perhaps agencies could start including more emergency and rescue training in the initial OW course?? I for one at least wish it was that way, and I can't wait til I do my rescue training... but I feel it should have been taught at the OW level.

Some agencies do teach it at the OW level. NAUI mandates that some form of Rescue must be included in every class.

Last year I taught a 12-year old girl how to dive. Her dad was a former student of mine, and since he was going to be her dive buddy, he participated in the class. The final exercise of the OW class was for her to bring her "unconscious" father up from 20 feet and tow him 100 feet to the beach. She did it better than some DM's I've seen ... despite the fact that her dad outweighed her by more than 100 lbs.

Kids are perfectly capable of learning this stuff ... in fact, unless you tell them so it usually never even occurs to them that it's supposed to be hard.

Personally, I'd feel a lot safer with that kid as my buddy than I have felt with a lot of adults I've been in the water with ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)