Family fun in raro

[Frosty]

Hey folks. We are 3 weeks or so back from 8 days of fantastic diving in Rarotonga.
We have four boys aged 8,12,13 and 15.
ALL of the kids now have scuba diving experience and they ALL just LOVE to dive.
The 15 year old now has Padi Open water certification
The 13 year old has Junior open water certification.
The 8 year old is a "bubblemaker"-Ie he did a scuba "dive" in the swimming pool down to 1.2m with no problems at all Then gently went down the pool to 3.0m so we took him for a "propper" dive in a 3.0m deep area of a lagoon. He took to it like a duck to water.The little rotter was busy "telling" his dad and the instructor what to do using hand signals whilst swimming around looking at the fish and coral.We were laughing so hard our masks were fogging up. Nga his personal instructor was just fantastic. "steering" him towards the cool stuff to see and making sure he was not out of control for even a second.
The 12 year old was struggling with mask clearing and equalising during the first pool session for his Junior open water and was getting a bit upset.
The instructor talked with me and I asked if maybee I could try 1 on 1 doing the drills with him in the pool. REALLY good guy he agreed totally with giving it a try.With me the 12 year old was sitting on the bottom of a 3.0m foot pool playing paper,sisors,rock quite happillly so equalising was cracked .Then another game with mask off and no worries.Mask back on and cleared all good.
Even so it was decided to give him another year before trying a full OW with him. Instead the instructor tested him on the basic skills needed for a DSD dive and we went out and did 2 12 meter/30 foot dives with him.
He loved every minute of the diving but showed his age and lack of maturity so it was a good call not going to JOW with him.
And the "old man" got to get in 14 dives all around the island. Including some fantastic easy cave diving and up close and personal with a turtle or two.
All in all a really fantastic dive trip to Rarotonga thanks in a BIG part to the guys at Cook Island Divers.
I can't recomend those guys too much. The instructors and DM's really went out of their way to make sure everyone had a really fantastic time but also extremely safe.
A personal high was diving in a 3mm full steamer with only 4kg of weight. Tropical diving is just that easy to get down
We took heaps of pictures but I'm a tyro at photography so pleaee forgive to poor quality-actually I can't load anything-how to reduce em to 400kb argg

[Frosty]

Just reading back through old posts and came across this one.
Things have changed a bit -as they do over time.
Three of my four boys now have their Jow or OW certs. Im now a rescue diver and my wife is AOW.
We are off to vanuatu in a few days where my daughter is going to try for her jow.

[divepirate]

Awesome stuff, I am glad they stuck with it.
There are so many distractions for kids nowadays, it is all to easy to stay home and get on the plasyt4tion or x-bux or play games on the latest i-device.

(names intentionally altered)

Good on you for keeping their interest in the right place.
Who knows, your kids may be the next generation of instructors teaching my young kids to dive.
Kudos..