I told my son that I want to go diving on my 80th birthday.
He said, "ok".
In the Caribbean.
"Ok".
You're paying for it.
Gulp'"ok."
He said, "ok".
In the Caribbean.
"Ok".
You're paying for it.
Gulp'"ok."
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
Kids are individual and develop at different rates. For some, I absolutely agree, and the training needs to take that into account.I basically agree with the last 3 posts. Children are capable of learning an awful lot of things at a young age. I do keep beating my drum about brain development and a mature 10 year old's ability to deal with a life threatening scuba situation. I am not a neuro-scientist, so maybe I'm just throwing out there my perception that 10 year olds diving within the set guidlines, with a certified diver is somewhat risky.
Nice story. Starting early is the trick, and being comfortable in the water. Then everything comes out much easier.Both children are very comfortable in the water having started swimming lessons at around 8 months of age.
I think I was fooling around in the ocean (and maybe swimming in Long Island Sound) at age 6. My guess is I didn't have a proper swim stroke at that age.Nice story. Starting early is the trick, and being comfortable in the water. Then everything comes out much easier.
Instead children who never touched water in their first years, and start swimming only at 6 years or later, have much more difficulties.
I did teach scuba diving in my career to more than 1000 students, so i had seen who where the ones with more problems.I think I was fooling around in the ocean (and maybe swimming in Long Island Sound) at age 6. My guess is I didn't have a proper swim stroke at that age.
I may question your saying that if you don't start swimming at 6 you will have much more difficulties (learning to swim? scuba later on?). Not saying I disagree, just wondering what (statistics, experience?) you base this on.
This makes a lot of sense, and was something that I wanted to address with my own kids. My parents did what they could, given the resources available at the time, but there are a lot more resources available today. Living in FL, my parents felt in necessary to make sure we were all very comfortable in the water, even before we had our own pool, we had local community pools we used.1) People lacking "aquaticity", as they did barely learn to swim before starting the diving course, and who relied always on mask, snorkel and fins for being safe in the sea. These people are unsafe if dumped in the sea naked, without any equipment. Most of them did learn at 10 years or more, and as children were never going at the sea with parents (mountaineers, etc.).