Question How young to freedive

[Gazzer]

I am a PADI Master Instructor and have taught 13 year old to freedive. He has been out with me for an extra 10 sessions (and counting) since his course. He can now safely go down to 23 metres. I cannot find any articles about the way his body would react to this depth (and beyond).
Any suggestions would be welcome..

 

[dcvf]

Hi « Gazzer »,
I think your question is for a pediatrician, ideally a diver.
He will probably ask to examine the teenager to judge his physical and perhaps also psychological development.

 

[cdavis]

Until puberty, my two kids were quite happy at 20 ft, although they could dive much deeper when they chose. Puberty kicked in about 15 and all of a sudden they were diving 80+. I don't consider them particularly talented and they probably represent the norm. I've also had the pleasure of diving with a truly talented young diver, who was diving 80+ for 2 minutes+ before 13. He also had very poor realization of his limits and would sometimes push himself to the point of losing vision, and did not seem bothered by the experience. Had a very small samba while I was his buddy. We watched him very close. For my part, I did enough stupid stuff at 15 and 16 to get me killed several times over, tunnel vision, lose of color vision, stars, yada, yada. The experiences scared me bad enough to get a little more cautious, but might not have at an earlier age.

I think its not a very good idea to allow kids younger than puberty to dive deep and long, even if they want to. That is especially true when not diving in a tight buddy system or in water cloudy enough so that the buddy can't see the diver when he is on the bottom.