“Mama, I want to dive.”

By Karen Erens

 

That is a question not too many parents will hear.

 

And I must admit that Jean-Marc and I are struggling with that other question: “Papa, do I really have to dive?”

 

Our son is thirteen and is no longer interested in diving for a couple of years. As we are living on our sailing yacht at sea, that is a real pity as we are diving quite a lot.

 

One year ago, we thought he had gained interest again, and at that moment, we started hunting lionfish while diving. We built our own zookeeper and taught him how to use the hunting gear (Hawaiian sling, speargun) and what to be careful with. He joined in and even shot some lionfish himself. But soon after this experience, he also lost interest in hunting. Done it, had an experience, move on to the next thing? Was that it?

 

Although he is a good diver, he is no longer motivated to dive. Is it too much hassle with all the equipment? Or is he just bored underwater, unable to chat and play games on his phone?

We get an unclear answer when we ask him, so we have no clue. We tried everything to motivate him again, but so far, without success.

 

How do you motivate children to get interested in diving? And at what age can they start?

 

A motivated child is what you want. My godchild asked about diving and ocean life when he was six or seven. I took him diving at eight but in a warm pool. Diving was not easy for him, as he is not the tallest boy, so regarding dive equipment, the tank bothered him, and I did use Junior dive gear. He really wanted to look under the surface, so he did.

 

At the age of 10, I taught him the Junior open water course in a warm Caribbean destination; it was a dream to teach him. He was more motivated than any other adult that I was teaching before him. We did beautiful dives together in the tropical waters, which would not have been possible in the cold European waters.

 

But will he still be motivated in a few years? Time will tell.

 

We have been anchored in Curaçao for a while, diving daily with other sailors on the beautiful reefs around the Spanish Water. Our Danish friend’s boat, SY Elsa, has two children onboard, Sonja (six years old) and Svend (eight years old). They go out for snorkelling trips with their parents and see them diving with us almost daily. So, Svend got curious about scuba diving and started to ask when he could try to dive.

 

So maybe the trick is to have them get interested by themselves, have them ask to dive and not tell them they should dive because we, the adults, are diving.

 

We are diving a lot as we work in the scuba diving business. I remember when our son took his first breath underwater; maybe we should have waited for him to crave to do a dive rather than treat diving as a normal thing to do every day.

 

If children learn to dive at the age of 10 years, they might become bored rather quickly. We, adult divers, might like the quietness while diving, just listening to our breathing patterns and looking at the fish corals and all the things nature offers down there, but for young teenagers, this might be too boring.

 

They are always kept busy by their phone, social media, video games, and YouTube, so maybe we should try to find a way to get more excitement in diving so they feel challenged during a dive.

Advanced-level diving could create these feelings by diving in the dark, around a wreck, etc. This is special, but is it necessary?

 

We experienced with our son that he had a little more interest in diving if other teenagers were involved or if some tasks were put in the dive like searching for that specific fish, counting all the parrot fish (or another type), take a GoPro and make a story about the small puffer fish, ….

 

Even in a pool, diving can be much more fun by doing fun things. In the past, we organized underwater athletic games, for instance, playing basketball with a ball filled with salt water, diving with a spoon and a ping pong ball that you need to keep down in the water using the spoon upside down to hold the ping pong ball under it, build a nice construction underwater with plastic tubes, play underwater UNO with the unique plastic cards. There are so many other things to do.

 

So, if we try to make scuba diving a little more challenging for our teenagers, they might be motivated divers for years and years, becoming interested in teaching scuba themselves! We need this next generation in the scuba diving industry!

 

Do you also have those young teenagers in your environment who are eager to do a scuba dive? Or uninterested in scuba diving?

 

Contact us via email or through our social media, and we will be happy to share our experience in giving those children that excellent diving experience.

 

Remember, our mission is in our name – ScubaBiz.Help!