PADI Seal Team

[nvquercus]

My daughter participated in a discovery program a few years ago when she was eight. The program was held over two weeks at a day camp sposored by the city (as an aside it was her favorite two weeks of the summer day camp). I on the other hand have always been interested in blowing bubbles under water since my college days but never had the time or money.

Last month, now that she is thirteen and in preparation for a trip, she and I both became open water certified. I chose to to do a semi-private lesson where she and I were the only ones in the class. This way she could have more attention from the instructor. As I watched her go through the required skills in the pool, she was at complete ease looking like she had done these many times before. When we hit the open water skills, she continued on the same path and ran through all of the skills quickly and effciently. She only had a little problem with the navigation portion of the class and logging the dives. When we went on our trip, she so enjoyed the diving that it was hard to pull her from the water.

I would attribute her success in getting certified and ease underwater to her experience in the pool when she was eight. It made her appear that she had an innate knowledge of not only the equipment used, but also the skills necessary to solves the problems that arise when scuba diving.

Hope this helps.

 

[Sue J]

If your daughter is interested in eventually getting certified I would highly recommend having her do the Seal Team course.

At 8 my son did the SSI Scuba Rangers course, which is that agency's version of Seal Team. It was a great introduction to scuba because it was very child focused. The instructors were experienced in working with kids and didn't take things for granted. They presented information gradually and repeated as necessary, and my son was always quite safe in the pool.

The biggest advantage was that when, at 10, he decided he wanted to get certified, he already had a great deal of dive knowledge and experience with scuba equipment. He was able to keep up with the adults in his course because he had a head start. I was also much more comfortable with letting him out into the open ocean knowing that he had learned the safety information twice, once with SR and once in his OW class. I felt confident signing him up for the OW course because I had a good sense of how he would handle the physical part of diving and he had demonstrated that scuba was a real interest for him, not just a passing fancy.

At 14 my son is now PADI Jr. AOW certified and working on Rescue. Next weekend he'll be doing drysuit training. This summer he'll be doing a 3-week teen liveaboard. Scuba Rangers turned out to be a great start for him.