Kathy,
My dad was a Navy diver and decided one summer that he wanted to recreationally dive also. Well, rule number one is always dive with a partner so...he decided that so he would always have a partner he had both my brother and I PADI certified. I have a lot of great memories of diving with my dad and brother that I would never trade. I got certified at 12. Fast forward 10 years and my fiance (now dh) are talking about honeymoons and he says something to the effect of "we need to get you dive certified so that we can dive together". I look at him really puzzled and say "I am certified, have been for years". I remember him looking at me very skeptically and asked to see my dive log, figuring he'd trip me up. So I went and got it (okay, it took a little bit to dig it out of the gear) and gave it to him. He starts looking through it, and looks up and says "these are all your dives? are you sure?" and I said that was my current log the old one was filed somewhere but I could find it if he wanted to see it....I couldn't figure out the problem so I asked. Apparently (at the time) dh had just started diving and had 15ish dives under his belt so when he looked at my log he realized that I had many more dives and he felt a little embarrassed. Its great now that we're in Hawaii and can dive together.
Okay, probably more than you wanted to know. Long story short - I HIGHLY recommend the experience for kids.
Aloha, Kristin