@dr.steve,
I just read
@dcvf2 technicolor post. Scares hell-Q out of me ! And not too much in diving can scare me !
Dang ! After all that free diving/spearfishing before amd after the introduction of the French developed but American patented snorkel I discovered I had been doing it all wrong !
Oh well ! cant teach an old dog new tricks !
sdm
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FYI-- This may be of assistance
Fifty plus years ago my five children and several other pioneer diver's children were tots and excited about diving. All had been born to pioneer SoCal diving families and had grown up in a aquatic./diving world
Perhaps my experiences can be in some way helpful to you.
The greatest obstacle was the mask - which your daughter has one that fits and has mastered by emulating you. We discovered in those days of long ago that the off shelf masks were not made for the juvenile faces. We solved the fit problem by modifying their masks with a border of neoprene wet suit rubber it became a very comfortable mask which they used for many years. -- (just a suggestion for the future)
The next step was to acclimate them to water over the mask. This was readily accomplished by placing a mask over their faces and creating a game of standing under the shower allowing the water to flow over there faces was the highlight to their bath … it was fun for them and also was expected as the highlight of their baths.
Soon they were snorkeling in the bath tub- what fascinated them us a mystery - But we suspected that in their young minds the were diving into the depths and exploring the unexplored.
By the time the were 2 to 2-1/2 they were breathing compressed air from a normal sized SCUBA tank on the floor attached to about 3 foot HP hose and modified mouth piece.. It was discovered the normal adult mouth piece was just too large and cumbersome for their mouths so they the were trimmed down with scissors and finished finger nail emery boards ( I suspect today there are ample electronic devices which would trim faster and smother)
Soon the were in the Pacific ocean -- not to deep or far from shore but in their pre school minds they were divers - just like mom and dad and all the frequent visitors to out busy home
It was always stressed in our household that diving with Dad and Mom was an earned privilege, not a right ! School and church were paramount, diving was an ancillary activity that was earned by top grades ,school and church activities.
Dive logs were always completed and must contain a new never previously described item discovered in the UW world -- Now almost 50 years later reading the logs are a source of enjoyment at family gatherings
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FYI
read or ignore the following --
My son Dr, Sam IV grew up in a pioneer OC dive family and has been diving ,since he was very young child, now approaching almost 50 years of diving . He is a NAUI (LIFE) and PADI Instructor, a 1997 SSI Pro 5000 recipient, the youngest diver listed in the 1993 Who's Who of SCUBA Diving and board certified ER & Scrips trained Hyperbaric doctor.
He began his very youthful diving career using a personal flotation vest aka PFV made from a US Divers flotation bag a Sea Tec-Inflatable systems hose and a dump valve from SCUBA Pro unit.
On his 7th Christmas he received one of the first BIUs, a full size "At Pac" which are no longer produced. He used this full size unit for about 15 years, when we both agreed it was time for scraping.
Dive logs were always completed and must contain a new never previously described item discovered in the UW world -- Now almost 50 years later reading the logs are a source of enjoyment at family gatherings
There is a recent article in NAUI Sources about me and my son.
I will extract his portion as an attachment so you can read or ignore.
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Attachment:
S
amuel Miller IV, was a diver almost from birth. Having first mastered bathtub diving as a toddler-the regulator had a long hose and the cylinder was on the bathroom floor-he graduated to the family pool at age 4 using a MSA cylinder with homemade backpack. At 5 years old, he was in the Pacific Ocean. "Not too deep and not far from shore, but he was underwater, and in his own mind, he was a diver," said his father. Miller IV had a lot of encouragement from his family and also from family friends who were diving luminaries themselves.
The photo shows "Sammy Miller" on his sixth birthday getting ready for a dive with Dr. Charlie Brown, NAUI's medical adviser, with whom Miller IV dived many times. Brown was interested in learning how a young child adapted to diving.
By the time he reached his l0th birthday, Miller IV had logged more than 100 open-water dives, and that year, he completed the Los Angeles County and NAUI Scuba Diver courses, although he was too young to be certified. During the summer of his 12th birthday, he was accepted and successfully completed a 40-hour US Divers equipment repair course. At age 18, he became the youngest person listed in Who's Who of Scuba Diving.
In SoCal diving circles, Miller IV was considered a top hunter and freediving spearfisher. When he turned 18, he was accepted for provisional membership in the Long Beach Neptunes Spearfishing Club, and then into full membership.
In his spare time, Miller IV designed, fabricated and sold custom-built teakwood spearguns. His guns had a custom-length balance bar measured to the user's arm length and a handle that was shaped from a mold of the owner's gloved hand in the shooting position. During college, he served on weekends as a deckhand on the dive charter boat Golden Doubloon.
In 1991, Miller IV became a NAUI Instructor (NAUI 13227) and taught scuba at one of the Southern California dive shops. He won a scholarship to the Catalina Chamber course, completed their internship and became a qualified chamber technician.
While waiting to enter medical school, he began technical mixed gas diving with his friend Jeff Bozanic, making deep technical dives on a regular basis off the California coast.
After completing medical school in Pomona, California, and an emergency room residency in Kingman, Arizona, he won a fellowship in hyperbaric diving medicine at University of San Diego Medical Center. At the end of the fellowship in 2008, he accepted a position at Marion Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria, California, where he is currently their director of ER/Hyperbaric Medicine.
Miller III summed up much of the feelings of him and his family: "The ocean provides bountiful gifts. It's a recreational area to protect for all present and future generations. Everybody should be able to enjoy it.
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Hope the helps -- enjoy safe diving
SAM III
SDMIII
