How deep should a child go?

Abbo

"You think you can do these things but you can't, Nemo"

"How do you know when they're ready?"
"When they know, you'll know, you know?"

I've just been watching 'Finding Nemo with my youngest: a redemptive story of an over-protective parent. We don't learn by being protected from all danger: we learn through mistakes. The important thing is to create a safe environment for making lots of good mistakes. Trust, but verify.

There have been a bunch of comments about parents gaining vicarious pleasure by forcing their kids to dive - or making them dive so as not to be an impediment to the parents' diving. A thing is not bad just because it's pleasurable. A passion is a precious thing: how can it be a bad thing to pass it on? My father's passion was mountaineering. One of my strongest memories is of rock climbing with him in North Wales. He wasn't happy with the quality of climbing instruction I was getting at school and he spent a week taking me - not my brother, just me - to go climbing, so that he could teach one-on-one. As he climbed above me, I saw his protection fall out and swirl round the rope down to me. I tried to call up and tell him, but my cries were lost in the wind and the rain. I was frightened for him. When I climbed up to his belay point I told him. He commended me on the very good decision of not telling him, as he might have climbed worse if he'd known. I learnt far more from being praised when I didn't deserve it than I would have if I'd earned it, and I've remembered that moment all my life. You just can't beat a master class from a caring parent.

Some people have argued that children can't get their minds around the physics involved. My experience, for what it's worth, is that most adults have forgotten most of the science they ever knew. In the same way that most computer hackers are kids, and we have to ask our children how to change the settings on our mobile 'phones, they have little trouble getting their minds around these concepts. Incidentally, I'm a qualified teacher too: a physics teacher. I took a postgraduate certificate of education, and taught physics in England, bushwalking in Australia and English in Japan before leaving teaching 20 years ago to bow to evil Mamon. My father, grandfather and great grandfather were all headmasters.

The final problem is obedience: yes, there are classes you will teach where that's an issue. Peer pressure can make kids behave badly. I'm not talking about a class of other people's kids: I'm talking about your own kids. If your passion isn't infectious and you can't instill discipline in your kids then you have no business teaching them to dive. I am assuming that you have a normal, warm relationship with your children.

In Japanese, the word for danger, 危機, has 2 elements: danger and opportunity. They're 2 sides of the same coin. There's a risk in teaching: that's why we need to be over-qualified as teachers - so that we can step in and take over when things go pear-shaped. I hope I'm up to it because my eldest is asking if we can go to Palau for Christmas. How much have they forgotten since they last dived?

Dave Sutton

"Yes" and "Have all of my Dad's SD's back to 1958"...

Think I'll drag them out and read a few of them this afternoon with my daughter. That's a good way for some kid to dad bonding on a rainy day.


Dave

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Ken

Here's one incident that shaped my perspective. I have many others non-diving related. The diving instructor was Darren Douglas.

Aquacorp 95'

A non-techincal diving trained father and his 14-year old son ran out of gas and drowned while trying to free the anchor on a wreck dive on air to the Moody at 130-140 f/40-43 m. A third diver ran out of gas, survived unconscious, and was revived. Two other divers on the trip were bent after they shortened their decompression.

The anchor line snagged following the first dive on the wreck, and the five individuals on the boat decided to dive the Moody a second time instead of cutting the line and going to dive a another, shallower wreck. The father, who organized and led the trip, partnered up with a second diver and decided to include his 14-year old son, who had not dived that day. The father wore a dry suit and twin steel 72s with a single outlet manifold (no first stage redundancy) that were not overpressurized. The second dry suit diver wore doubles and carried a pony. The son wore a wetsuit and carried and aluminum 80 cf tank. Reportedly, the team carried no decompression gas. Visibility was said to be about 50-60 f/15-18 m., water temperature on the bottom was about 50 –55 F, and there was a strong surface current that necessitated running a leader line from the stern to the anchor line to assist the divers’ descent. A second team of two divers followed the three down.

After descending and working to free the anchor line, the father’s partner surfaced 8-9 minutes into the dive and told the captain they needed more slack to free the line. He then went back down to the bottom. Upon his return, the father indicated he was low on air and headed up the anchor line. The second team of divers also ascended. The son and the partner remained.

About 12-15 minutes into the dive, the son indicated he was out of air. The partner gave him a second stage and the two started up. During their ascent, the partner ran out of air, switched to his pony, and tried to drag the son, now presumably drowned, up the line. The partner then ran out of air in his pony. In the process, he apparently dropped his weight belt before ascending unconscious to the surface. The son’s body, being negatively buoyant drifted back down. It is believed that the father either witnessed this event from the anchor line or saw the partner ascend alone, and went back down to save his son. The father and son were found together on the bottom.

Tom Rose

You are totally right that Kids should be allowed to be kids....A diver (who I would not dive again) ended up together on two trips in 90 and 91, decided that his son should also learn to dive. The dive ego on this new diver (the parent), was intense...like many new divers he was counting the number of dives, even worse he was afraid of missing a possible dive.

They went to Roatan, after the trip the so called adult told me that his kid did not want to dive all the time, but was interested in hanging out with a couple of girls his age at the resort and not dive five dives a day with his son. (big surprise). It was not a positive experience for either the father or son.

Neither dive nowdays....

They were lucky, nothing happened to either of them.

Tom