If healthy relationships are built on shared experiences (spoiler alert: they are), two types of trips are especially good for creating those moments: bonding holidays, where just two members of the same family travel together, and diving holidays.
The ultimate bonding trip
All divers know the magic of the post-dive debrief back on the boat. 'Did you see that [insert beastie]?' 'Remember when [insert exciting encounter]?' Now imagine sharing that moment with your 13-year-old, after his first ever dive, and he looks you straight in the eye and says, 'Dad, that was - without doubt - the best hour of my life.'
That's exactly what happened at Soneva Jani in the Maldives, where my son George and I had a dive for the ages: perfect visibility, thriving fish-filled reefs, and, to cap it all, a pod of dolphins swimming overhead. The instructor said to me afterwards, 'I've done 2,000 dives here and only seen dolphins once, and he sees them on his first dive!'
George was (unsurprisingly) instantly hooked, so I arranged a proper learn-to-dive holiday. Fast forward a few months and George is now a qualified PADI Open Water diver and fully-fledged member of the worldwide diving community. Me? I'm equally well qualified to tell you how best to introduce teens, or even tweens, to diving.
Rule one: do the theory at home
First rule: if at all possible, do the 'boring but important' theory bit online and at home. If your children are anything like mine, particularly the male variety, they may have a deep aversion to exams. Mention that two days of their holiday will be spent in a classroom learning and answering quiz questions and you may encounter... resistance.
So, rule one in practice: sign up with PADI, register your child for the Open Water course, link it to the destination's dive centre and complete the theory in advance. The dive centre will see that it's done before you arrive, and your Original Diving expert will coordinate the whole thing seamlessly.
I won't put lipstick on a pig. Even at home, it took some effort to persuade George to put the hours in. The penny did eventually drop that the alternative would be sitting in a dingy dive-centre classroom rather than mucking about in the pool, so after ten or so hours online, he passed with flying colours and the dive centre in Egypt was duly informed.
Diving into Hurghada
After a month or so of what we at Original Travel and Original Diving call 'anticication', that delicious looking forward to new cultures and adventures, we flew to Egypt and made our way to the wonderful Oberoi Sahl Hasheesh resort. We've probably sent more people there than anywhere else in the history of Original Diving, and for good reason. Lovely rooms, charming staff, a superb house reef and a dive centre team who have turned teaching our clients to dive into an art form.
Despite dealing with the hotel for years, I'd never been, nor actually met Khamis and Mezen from the dive centre, but they welcomed George and me like old friends. For the next couple of days, I enjoyed a thoroughly civilised routine of lounging about while George and another teenage learner were put through their paces in the pool, mastering the key skills like mask clearance and regulator retrieval.
Taking the plunge
Then came the move to the sea itself, accessed from the hotel's brilliant jetty that juts out over a vast and very healthy reef. He went down to eight metres, performed his skills (equalisation, buoyancy checks, hand signals and all) and cruised along the reef like a duck to water.
By day three he was qualified, and after the almost sacral presentation of George's first dive logbook, the fun really began. We buddied up along the house reef, seeing everything from oriental sweetlips to a monster moray eel - the biggest, by far, that I have ever seen. Then we enjoyed a full-day boat trip with other divers from the hotel. George quickly slipped into that special camaraderie only divers know: the chats between dives, the quiet shared sense of satisfaction on the cruise back, sun dipping towards the horizon. For the rest of the week, we were a band of brothers and sisters, exchanging nods and conversations back at the hotel. Shared experience, it turns out, extends well beyond family.
More than a qualification
As for George and me, the bond between us has deepened. We now share something the Barber womenfolk don't, although daughters Athena, Siena and India are firmly in my sights for conversion to the deep side. My wife, sadly, may be a dive lost cause.
So, if you love diving and suspect your children might too, take the plunge. Whether it's wintry evenings in a municipal pool or warm, clear waters somewhere far more glamorous, you won't regret it. Teach them to dive and you give them more than a qualification. You give them entry to a global community, a wondrous new world and something you'll always share. That's a rare gift.
