<p>Thanks all for the support and great ideas! Esp thanks Calmom – I needed to hear that (stick to your guns). I’ll present the idea of soccer, golf, javelin, tennis, and water polo (which is great, because they come out of the pool really clean!). I have to get over the idea that he’ll hate me for a little while. NYT has it right – the 2nd one (or undiagnosed ones) reveal problems much later. Thanks for the good luck wishes.</p>
<p>Can you get his doctor to forbid him from playing any more football? I think you are going to need some allies in this decision, especially if he is a good QB.</p>
<p>Also, in weighing this, I think you need to take into account the impact this will have on him in his school. It could really hurt him with his peers. Again, having the doctor forbid it would help in this regard, too.</p>
<p>My very athletic son plays flag football and loves it. Fast paced and everyone gets a chance to play. The NFL runs local leagues and it is very professional and organized. We even went to a regional tournament at a pro team’s practice facility – big thrill.</p>
<p>Soccer… do people not watch the game? I’ve seen several concussions occur in soccer. And it is actually one of those prime sports where concussions occur but you don’t actually know it. I get weighing the risks, but you cannot protect kids from everything.</p>
<p>A young man I know played football and hockey throughout HS and College. Never had an injury. He recently coached JV Hockey. A week ago he was in a car accident where his neck was broken. He has no feeling below his shoulders. At this point, the best scenario would be that he regain his ability to breath on his own. </p>
<p>Put it in perspective folks. Life is full of risk and sometimes, it doesn’t matter how well you get thru it all, life still happens.</p>
<p>First, I agree with sorghum…to take up rugby or even LAX over FB makes absolutely no sense at all.</p>
<p>Now, as a FB Mom, and a parent of a child that lined up on the field with Austin Trennum every week, I can say it is a hard decision, but Bullet and I have played the pro and con issue regarding our child.</p>
<p>Last night we were at the game. Austin’s younger brother plays 2nd string, and guess what? There he was last night out on the field with his folks in the stands.</p>
<p>We all want to protect our kids, but sometimes we allow media and fear to make us act emotionally.</p>
<p>FB is a hard sport, but there has been a lot of reports that kids playing baseball are also at a high risk by a stray pitch. We put our kids in TKD thinking all of that gear makes them safe, but I can tell you our eldest has broken his foot 2 x in 2 yrs. Field /Ice hockey isn’t safe either. We can go down the list, and many of the sports that are kids participate in have an adherent danger of physical harm that we don’t think about it. Even GOLF…I have a scar on my forehead because I was hit with a golf ball when I was 3 mos pregnant.</p>
<p>The question to me as a Mom is if you evaluate every risk that your hs child faces? Have you pulled the car keys a way? I tell my kids all the time, I am not worried about you as a driver, I am worried about the other idiots on the road talking and texting on their phone or driving under any influence.</p>
<p>Austin was a very tragic death, but the more tragic deaths in PW over the past 3 months were hs kids who got in a car with another hs student who was drunk.</p>
<p>We need to do everything humanly possible to keep them here on this earth safe and sound, but where is the line you draw? Do you draw it thinking by not playing FB he is safer, or do you draw it at creating a cocoon for him? Not saying you are creating a bubble around him, just asking where that line is? Where does it start? Where does it end? Will you in a few yrs cross off colleges on the list because they had crimes committed against students…i…e UVA Yeardley Love, UNCCH’s Eve Carson, VT massacre?</p>
<p>Bullet and I do everything to protect our kids, but it really is about weighing the pro’s and cons. Multiple concussions, and our DS is out of there. One concussion, but seeing how because he enjoys it and knows academically he needs to pull a 3.0, plus the camaraderie is worth putting him out on the field again.</p>
<p>I think Austin’s parents would support that belief, because as I stated earlier we saw them last night at the game. I am sure if anyone weighed the options and risks this was a family who really thought long and hard about FB.</p>
<p>Someone mentioned fencing above. Might be a good choice with his wingspan if you have a local club. Water polo (also mentioned above) is only big in some parts of the country – I don’t think you could find it in our midwestern city. Maybe as a club sport. My D took up fencing this year after dropping her previous school sport, and is enjoying it a lot. It is a “thinking” sport as much as a physical one.</p>
<p>Classof2015, You are very welcome! </p>
<p>It’s true that we all do have to decide the risks for ourselves but it’s not just fear and media that would lead me to prohibit my kid from playing football. It’s science. </p>
<p>Thankfully, my kids “sport” is musical theater!</p>
<p>
I find it amusing that we can suggest *swordfighting *as a safer sport. It’s true, though.</p>
<p>I confess to knowing next to nothing about football, but friends who do tell me that the quality of the coaching can make a huge difference in safety. Some youth league and school coaches are just fathers or teachers who are good-hearted but don’t know much more than anyone else. Is your son’ coach knowlegeable, is he teaching the boys how to properly fall under a tackle, etc.? Would he be someone brave enough to refuse to play another team if his team would be clearly overmatched, like that recent case in the news?</p>
<p>My now 13 year old son loved flag football in third grade, but our town changes over to tackle in the fourth grade. As a physical therapist with experience in trauma units, but coming from a football crazed Pennsylvania community I agonized over this. In the end, my son felt he was “too skinny” for tackle.<br>
There was another recent thread on football and someone posted the following link, which I thought was very powerful:
[E:60</a> Second Impact - ESPN Video - ESPN](<a href=“http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=5163151]E:60”>http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=5163151)</p>
<p>To add to the “mean mom” idea, my daughters began throwing that comment out and one day out of frustration I replied “Put it in your book”. My confused daughter said “book???” I replied that when she was grown and famous she could write one of those My Mean Mom books…Chapter one: My Mean Mom makes me eat vegetables. I now have an 18 year old and 16 year old and we have many more chapters… My Mean Mom makes me call when I have arrived somewhere. My Mean Mom wants to know who I am going out with. My Mean Mom won’t let me go to beer bashes. My Mean Mom Makes me get a summer job for spending money. I am not sure how many chapters we are up to, but “put it in the book” has become a long standing running family joke.</p>
<p>I think you make a good point GFG</p>
<p>In our school, we have an athletic trainer at every practice and every game. </p>
<p>Additionally, it also comes down to the equipment, if the school is not replacing the equipment promptly, than you are looking at more injuries.</p>
<p>Monday night at the game, even the coaches were cognizant of the other teams players on the field. Our DS is 1st string and a big boy (6’4 1/2 and 240 lbs), when the coach saw that the other team sent in a smaller player our DS was pulled out and the 2nd stringer was sent in. He could have kept DS in, but all of the players safety meant more than the win…yes we were winning, but it wasn’t as if we were winning 40 to 3.</p>
<p>It is a rough sport no 2 ways around it, but playing soccer can be just as rough as a previous poster pointed out.</p>
<p>bhmomma,</p>
<p>I think that is a DD thing. I say the same thing to our DD, but I add, just wait until you have kids and then talk to me about how mean I was, compared to you as a parent.</p>
<p>We were all kids at one time, and we all thought our parents were the meanest people in the world. We believed we never become them, but here we are saying the same thing to our kids, that our parents said to us! Time may change, but parental cliches remain the same.</p>
<p>Went to watch DD play rugby for the first time. It was a lot more violent than I expected. One of the girls on her team suffered a slight concussion. The ref told her she should stay home in her dorm room that night to make sure she was ok, to which she replied, “but its our homecoming!” Pretty sure she went out partying instead of taking it easy.
DD called over the weekend to tell me that they lost their last game and that they were done for the season. She was disappointed. I was thrilled! Maybe she’ll find something else she likes better before the spring season.</p>
<p>Rugby is very violent…it is hard core.</p>
<p>I am a firm believer that we can not put our children in a bubble. My son played football for seven years. Another played LAX for four. Neither were at the hs level. One stopped due to health concerns, the other due to conflicting EC time constraints.</p>
<p>I will say that Rugby injuries are roughly 30% greater than that of football. Overall injuries in Rugby estimate 30% are head injuries. Based on the USA governing body it appears that they do take them quite seriously, noting that being ‘knocked out’ isn’t a primary factor in a concussion. In age-grade play a concussion requires a player to be out of practice/play for three weeks. In leagues older than this the three week rule can only be circumvented by being medically cleared by a neurologist.</p>
<p>I, nor my kids are involved in Rugby, so if I’ve gotten a few of the facts wrong please forgive me. Correct the information and inform others. My point being, for a parent who accepted the risks of football and LAX (heck even snowboarding, which did result in a concussion), I would never consider Rugby as a safer alternative.</p>
<p>BTW - We have the proverbial ‘list’ of all the things I can be blamed for in the house. I don’t think anyone could possibly keep track of it, keep up with maintaining it’s current status and things must be added on a daily basis according to one child or another. It’s just a concept at this point of ‘Seriously? Write it down, because there will be more’. Heaven help me if I am ever truly presented with an actual list! lol At this point I would just keep it for reference when my kids become parents. I believe I could begin crossing things off and my list would become much smaller. Yes, today I ‘suck’ for any number of reasons depending on which child you ask.</p>
<p>My tall muscular S started getting pressure to play FB from the HS football coach as a freshman. A lot of his friends were going out for the team and he really wanted to join them. We said absolutely not. Everybody was flabbergasted because he’d been playing hockey since he was six. In all the years he played hockey there were broken clavicles galore, an occasional broken wrist, and some broken fingers, and ankle or two, but not one concussion.</p>
<p>Believe me, we were not popular, but I had learned too much about brain injuries and their long term effects. I figured it was better to be briefly reviled than to sacrifice my S’s brain for a little HS glory. </p>
<p>My S is now a college freshman and playing rugby. He’s having a blast. He bought a helmet to wear, but I think that’s needed to keep ears from being yanked. Good luck.</p>
<p>Just to clarify my earlier post; my S was never injured playing hockey beyond bruises. The injuries I cited were his teammates and opponents. If he’d personally gotten all those injuries, we would have nixed hockey too.</p>
<p>Also, rugby is a very rough game as stated by others. However, in the research I did I could not find evidence that the amount of head injuries were anywhere near those sustained by FB players.</p>
<p>Thanks Hunt – I do worry about that (losing friends if he quits FB). One kid on his team had a bad concussion (out of school for 6 weeks) and one of his friends called him a wimp. I called a pediatric neurologist and told her “I want you to tell my son he can’t play FB”. She laughed. Seems like every day in the Fall a parent calls her and says the same thing. I think I’m more concerned than most about the long term concussion impact b/c S struggles academically as it is (ADD, central auditory processing issues; difficulty with reading/comprehension). I can’t imagine him getting through life with impaired brain function.</p>
<p>I love the fencing idea! Maybe I’ll rent the James Bond movie with fencing in it…as opposed to Parent Trap, which would be a turn off (girls).</p>
<p>I thought this thread was about Facebook!</p>
<p>I don’t have sons and so football never was a consideration (nor does our high school even have football). However, I seem to be in the minority on this thread. I think if you were that against football, the time to not allow it would be before he ever played. And the only reason to stop would be if either a doctor told him to or he wanted to. I think you’re gonna have a hard time not allowing him to continue. </p>
<p>But my main reason is that there are risks in everything. Every time your kid is in the car, it is a big risk. We have to try to take every precaution (so the right safety equipment for football is essential and so forth). My two girls were ski racers from the time they were tots. My younger one gave it up in junior high school due to schedule conflicts. My older one raced all the way through college. We know many who were severely injured, as well as deaths. Ski racing was my child’s passion. She had all the safety equipment. At every race, I did pray that she got down the hill in one piece. In a lifetime of ski racing, she never was injured in any capacity. I’m glad she had this experience. My other kid was very severely injured in a car crash as a teen though. We still allow our girls to drive.</p>
<p>Don’t know if anyone watches Myth Busters, but just this week I saw an episode where they were trying to determine whether being hit in the head with a full or an empty beer bottle causes more damage. There was a lot of slow-mo photography.</p>
<p>Initially, one of the guys was going to wear a FB helmet and let himself be hit on the head by the beer bottles, until he realized that the helmet (shown clearly in slow motion) absorbed much of the impact and would not give good results. They then switched to a pig head to determine what speed was necessary to break the bottle and decided that there was too much variation with a human swinging the bottle. Finally, they built a container with a gelatin “brain” in it and a mechanical arm to always swing at the same speed. They determined that the full bottle was much more harmful than an empty one. However, anyone watching the movement of the “brain” in slow motion would certainly think twice about any activity that resulted in trauma to the head. That is, of course, not to mention all the other kinds of trauma that can result in serious injury.</p>