son wants to scuba for his 8th birthday

[Prostardiver]

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."

 

[Belzelbub]

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.

Kids are individual and develop at different rates. For some, I absolutely agree, and the training needs to take that into account.

Both my daughters got certified at 10. Paths were different to get there. Oldest daughter excelled through pool sessions, and aced her checkout dives*. If weather had cooperated, she would have had her certification within 2 weeks of her 10th birthday. The weather caused about a 2 week delay. She took an extra set of pool sessions with a different class, and spent most of it practicing buoyancy control. Her instructors were amazed at how quickly she picked it up. Second daughter took a bit longer. She thumbed a couple of dives due to nerves, but did complete. She got her certification a couple months before her 11th birthday.

Both children are very comfortable in the water having started swimming lessons at around 8 months of age.

*During my oldest daughter’s checkout dives, I was thinking about how effective the drills were, especially the regulator retrieval drill. After all, it’s one thing to remove your owner regulator when ready, it’s quite another thing to suddenly find your regulator not in your mouth. That actually happened to her on her 3rd checkout dive. Another student’s fin knocked her regulator from her mouth, it went into free flow behind her. She did the drill, but didn’t come up with the regulator, she then grabbed her backup, cleared and resumed breathing. I was right behind her, so she was in no real danger. It took every ounce of my self control to hold back and see how she handled it. Once she got her backup in her mouth, I got her primary under control and she swapped when ready. That answered my questions about her readiness.

 

[Angelo Farina]

Both children are very comfortable in the water having started swimming lessons at around 8 months of 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.

 

[TMHeimer]

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 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.

 

[Angelo Farina]

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.

I did teach scuba diving in my career to more than 1000 students, so i had seen who where the ones with more problems.
And I have seen two clusters of problematic students:
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.). The point with them was not teaching them to swim properly in a correct style, some of them did already follow swimming courses, and in a pool they were capable of making long distances swimming horizontally. Those people lack aquaticity, which is something that "normal" children learn at 2-3-4 years, when playing in the water what we call "splash games". That's nothing to do with swimming, and it has to do about passing under the legs of a friend, reaching for objects on the bottom, making underwater rotations in every directions, walking upside down with hands on the sand bottom and the legs out of the water, etc. Those things are not taught in a normal swimming course for children or adults. So we started a specific course, called aquaticity course, which was specifically tailored to this group of students, and it was made a pre-requisite for them before the standard diving course. People who had those water-playing experience as pre-scholar children usually do not need this.
2) The second group of problematic students were high-level athletes. People training in their sport for 3-6 hours every day, and which acquired a very strong muscular memory from their sports. Of course, the sport practised changes the compatibility with scuba diving, a water-polo athlete is in general quite good, a pure swimmer much less, and the worst of the worst are bicyclers. Those guys and girls automated a number of rotatory leg movements, which are very, very difficult to overcome. Frog or butterfly swimming for them is simply impossible, both by hands and by legs, due to simmetricity.
But also teaching crawl swim, or to kick with fins in the standard vertical alternate movement is very hard, as they tend to switch to bicycle kicking, which is terribly inefficient.
Also breathing control is very difficult for cyclists, as they learn a special type of breathing which is very efficient in term of aerobic performances (being both fast and with a large vented volume), but is causing an anomalous air consumption when using an OC scuba system, and which is unsustainable with a CC re-breather.

In conclusion, what matters is that children are accustomed to stay in water (and underwater) since very small age, just playing and toying, not swimming. And possibly in the sea, not just in a small pool.
This makes them feel natural, relaxed and happy while inside water. When they grow up doing this systematically, they will become very good students for a scuba diving course, whatever the age they begin it.

 

[ToneNQ]

I qualified on or about my 14th birthday. I don't recall it being a huge thing, it was exciting but there was also a lot to learn and a lot to practice. My school teacher was the dive instructor, our leash was exceptionally short. I'll be looking long and hard at any program that I signed my girls up for. Additional pool time and tight supervision ratios would be on my list. I can help but feel that 8 is really young, but parents should know their kids best.

Regarding concerns about a child being capable of coming to your aid, many children would surprise you. I'd be leaning towards professionals supervising junior OW divers, and parents should consider a self-reliant or solo diver course and equipment. Plan simple dives and carrying all necessary redundancy to self-manage potential issues. When I was guiding dives I never expected aid from a recently qualified OW diver. If I needed their air, I'd probably have to grab their occy myself.

 

[Valyngar]

Was reading PADI courses and was surprised you only need to be 12 to become master scuba diver "best of the best". I remember that even enrolling in 90´s to ow minimum age was 14. So you could be 12 year old diving to 30 meters with DPV. Padi sure trusts youngsters!

 

[Angelo Farina]

My younger son was certified AOW at 12, while doing a LOB on the Great Australian Barrier, and we were routinely diving at 27-30 meters at that time...
He started at 5, indeed, not at 8. So it had already a 7-years long,very gradual experience, during which he made more than 100 dives.
Personally I think that the most dangerous age for being introduced to diving is around 14. If one is not trained when a child, better to wait at 24-25. This is mostly for males, females are more responsible at 14-20.
I and my wife share this opinion not only about diving, but about anything vaguely dangerous: ski, windsurf, kayak, mountain climbing, offroad motorbikes and bicycles, etc.

 

[Belzelbub]

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.).

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.

When my kids were born, we took the approach of pool-proofing our kids on top of a level of kid-proofing our pool. We focused primarily on training rather than physical barriers or flotation devices. I live in FL, and we hear stories every year of kids drowning. It happens quickly and usually it happens when a child bypassed the devices and entered the pool without their flotation aids. The child is usually very young and doesn't know that they can't really swim.

When we started our kids with the training, the instructor wanted us to not use flotation aids when we take the child in the pool as this puts them in a position that is different than what they should be in while swimming (vertical vs. horizontal). Apart from the flotation required when on a boat, my kids never used any type of swim aids. I believe that definitely helped with their comfort in the water. Both at one point fell in a pool (under supervision), and both were able to self rescue with absolutely no fear from the incident. That helped tremendously with their comfort in the water.

 

[TMHeimer]

ToneNQ--regarding ".....coming to your aid, many children would surprise you". I assume you are basing this on seeing children perform in a course, or in "set up" situations to test them? I assume you are not talking about actual dive incidents you have personally observed or heard of?

Angelo-- You have so much more scuba teaching experience than I, so I will have to agree with you when you say 14 years old is the most dangerous age to start scuba. As a band teacher of maybe 1,000 students age 12-15, my observations make me disagree-- but that's not scuba. So, it may be true for scuba that 14 is the worst age, even though I feel a 12 year old's lesser brain development (regarding concrete vs. abstract thinking) makes them less likely to perform in a true emergency. Based on all my school teaching, for my own safety I'd still feel better (safer) buddied with a 15 year old than a 12 year old. I may be wrong. I wonder how many would agree? Idea for a poll? We are at odds, but maybe both correct.

I do agree with you completely on your point of "aquaticity". Even with my severely limited time as a DM, I did marvel at the odd (adult) student who seemed to be at odds with the water--even the pool. My reply before was to your quote ".....and start swimming at only 6 years or later.....". You later explained that the primary problem with some students is that they didn't spend much time in the ocean (lake, sound, etc.) at a young age--ie- lived in the mountains. And that even though they did learn to properly swim, they were not set up to be comfortable doing things on scuba, like just messing around underwater, as well as skills, etc... I referred to them as "non-water" people.
Then again, I can't recall seeing a student ace the 200m swim test with a correct stroke go on to have any trouble with the course. Then again again, I recall that maybe only one (2 at most) out of class of maybe 8 were in that category. The rest either "gutted out" the 200 with a poor stroke, with the odd one coming close to a heart attack at age 22. But that gets us back to the old "purpose of the swim tests" topic and I'm not going there....

I harken back to my only real issue about starting 10-12 year olds on scuba. Brain development and how they would react in a true emergency. Belzelbub's example of his daughter getting the reg kicked out of her mouth is somewhat of an example with a good ending--but, I don't know if that qualifies as a really big emergency-- such as OOA, entrapment, nasty current at depth. And, I don't know if that would happen that way with most 10-12 year olds. I would THINK a good outcome like that is more likely with a 15 year old "risky" male teenager-- based on my experience teaching both groups in school.
So I ask, have you had (or heard of) any serious incidents that have happened involving 10-12 year olds and the results? As compared to 14-15 year olds? I would imagine we don't hear of many because I think a lot of these kids may be in fact diving with experienced parents (though the parent could go uncloncious too). And, I would imagine some of these accidents/non-accidents are simply not reported.