<p>I was the mom that wouldn’t let them start playing football until they were 14 (they started with baseball, soccer, and skating in elementary school)…I didn’t want the “high risk” growth plate injury sports so went with their pediatrician’s recommendation. I’ve been through more than a few (thankfully, minor) concussions with my very athletic kids…all from ice hockey, baseball, and figure skating! Baseball has actually been the highest injury rate sport for us…which makes sense as the helmets are pretty flimsy and offer no facial protection and there’s very little else in the way of required safety equipment. My guess is that rugby might fall into the same category. The college-aged football players (both linebackers) have had not a singe concussion from football - maybe we’re lucky but a broken wrist has been the worst football injury to date! </p>
<p>Although there have been plenty of football sprains, and a few dislocations, I always insist that they have the best protective gear available and I think that’s helped a lot. When the school didn’t provide cowboy collars or high quality “concussion” helmets, I called the trainer and asked for recommendations of what and where to order them as I wouldn’t allow them to play without them. I have actually taken my kids, and their equipment, for professional fittings and that’s been well worth the time and effort…so many injuries could be avoided or minimized with the right equipment, used properly, and kids often aren’t aware of how important it is to regularly check their equipment for damage. If you decide to allow him to play again, I strongly recommend that you/your H take the time to inspect the equipment they’re giving him and make sure it’s high quality and in excellent condition.</p>
<p>I have resigned myself to the fact that my kids LOVE sports (I’m so not a sports person) and the benefits outweigh the risks for them. They’re very healthy, happy, and stay focused and steer clear of drinking/drugs…and the fact that they’re old enough to understand and accept the risks in order to pursue their chosen activities counts for a lot in my book too.</p>
<p>My 6’3.5", 260 lb. defensive lineman didn’t start playing til HS. Heck, he didn’t do any sports until 8th grade, when he started Tang Soo Do. We had a LONG talk about football injuries when he had a pars fracture in his back soph year (chip on a vertebra, apparently is most common among gymnasts, linemen and kids with a fast growth spurt – he was 2 for 3). Turns out he played about half the season with the fracture – it acted like a muscle sprain. He was out the rest of the season and decided not to purue wrestling or shotput, which the coaches had been encouraging him to do. He did become much more diligent about weight training so the muscles could support his weight, not the skeleton. We all agreed that another significant football injury would be the end of it. (We also paid for extra safety equipment.)</p>
<p>He played the last two years, but got cold feet about playing in college. Was thankful he had not had any head injuries and wanted to keep it that way, since he knew his future would involve brains, not brawn.</p>
<p>Is doing weight training and playing floor hockey in college for fun and keeping in shape.</p>
<p>As a former HS and college football player, I can see both sides to the issue. Football is the greatest team sport of all time IMO, and helped me in many ways.</p>
<p>But we are all learning with time how serious concussions can be. And I can almost guarantee that every kid that at least played thru high school has had his “bell rung”, which is another way of saying concussion.</p>
<p>I think education has helped tremendously in only the past couple of years, and kids are being treated much more carefully for the most part. But we still have a long way to go to make the game safer for those kids that love to play. Good coaches spend a lot of effort teaching kids to not initiate head-to-head contact, and lead with the shoulder, and keep ther heads up, etc. But some kids are always going to be more aggressive, and those kids are at higher risk.</p>
<p>I don’t begrudge a parent or a kid that deems football unsafe to play. But I also know that millions upon millions of kids play the game for years without suffering major trauma. So I fully support kids that choose to play.</p>
<p>I just hope that education becomes a bigger part of the game for coaches, players, trainers, doctors, and parents. IMO, there should be NO excuse for allowing a kid that has symptoms of a concussion from playing. Sit out until those symptoms go away, or stop playing altogether. Easier said than done, but if everyone along the line would follow those rules, there would be way less critical injuries.</p>
<p>There was a New Yorker story in October, 2009, that painted a graphic depiction of the long term damage of concussions and even sub-concussive impacts. It made me really glad that neither of my son’s had the physiques needed to play. Part of the article’s power was that we don’t allow dogfighting (Vick went to prison for it) because it involves training animals to be willing to destroy their bodies in order to achieve victory, but we admire football players who have “got game”–essentially the same trait. It might be hyperbole to compare the two, so I won’t attempt to defend it, but it was a power trope.</p>
<p>Maybe the article is available on line, and Meanmom can ask her son to read it.</p>
<p>I wish my older son could read this thread… He was a big boy with the perfect body for a LB, TE type of position. Anyhow, he was approached to play every single year of high school. I would not let him. I told him I valued his body parts and brain too much. He balked at first but grew to understand why I refused to let him do it. His answer every year to the football coach??? “My mom won’t let me play.” hahaha… He ended up being a 3 year varsity letter winner in tennis. His team won a CIF Championship. It was fine in the end, but I still remember feeling bad when I forbid him to play football. This was in 2004 before all the concussion news. I don’t feel bad anymore…</p>
<p>I haven’t seen wrestling mentioned. Excellent sport. Combative, lots of contact, but few concussion injuries as far as I know. Teaches respect and discipline. Until our son became involved in high school we had never been exposed to the sport.</p>
<p>S plays high school football. We wouldn’t allow tackle football until the eigth grade. I have told him he is done with the football career after the first concussion. I don’t think he minds. Originally wrestling was to stay in shape for football. Now football is to stay in shape for wrestling.</p>
<p>We had a mom had our school who would not allow her boys to play football but her older son broke his eye socket in baseball and got a concussion and broke his tailbone in basketball. Another friend played football through high school, then was paralyzed in a rugby game in college. My daughter played soccer for many years and never once had to leave a game for an injury, but a year after she finished playing she was diagnosed with severe spondylolisthesis (a C curve of the spine), requiring a spinal fusion, due to a stress fracture in one of her vertebrae, from her years of playing soccer, that went undetected. My son had a concussion, and had to have stitches twice from basketball. I don’t know what the answer is, but pretty much there are risks with everything.</p>
<p>Has your son seen a doctor (sports med or neuro) who specializes in treating concussion patients? You need to evaluate how severe the first concussion was and get some professional advice about the return to football. Sequential concussions can be worse with each experience and we don’t know the long term…Has he had IMPACT testing?</p>
<p>My daughter had a severe concussion from cheer and missed over two months of her soph. year. She was not fully healed for six months. I would support no more FB…</p>
<p>Forgot to mention that I am very pro-crew as my other daughter was a high school coxswain recruited for college. Your son would find that crew is much more physically demanding than football and requires discipline that will set him up well for life as well as college. Good luck to you both!</p>
<p>CountingDown–I might possibly have a little different attitude about football if my son were built like yours, but as he is 6 feet tall and less than half the weight of your son, I think tennis was a good decision!</p>
<p>OP–My son was in a group of 5 friends at school who were all soccer players, so I had some of the same concerns about friends when he quit soccer to concentrate on tennis. He still eats lunch with the guys every day 1 1/2 years later; I’m the one who is sad because I seldom see the soccer parents any more!</p>
<p>Fencing enthusiasts–This scene probably bears little resemblance to real fencing, but one of my favorite movie scenes of all times is in The Princess Bride (particularly the part about “I am not left-handed”).</p>
<p>Just wanted to add to my earlier post … S2 was so disappointed when he couldn’t tryout football that he parked himself in front of the computer for weeks - he was doing school work and other academic stuff, but would not get up and work out or talk to the family - this went on for quite sometime, so in my case there is a flip side to it. He eventually came out of his cave and now seems to have gotten over it though.</p>
<p>Soccer is NOT safe, due to all the “heading” of the ball (or whatever it is called) that kids do. I read an article about the cognitive abilities of professional soccer players… Not good news!!!
Ultimate frisbee is a noncontact team sport played with a team of sweaty females or males running up and down a field with goals on each side - kind of like soccer but with a disc, and self-umped. DD played lacrosse, and DS played tennis in High school - but both found their true love of sports playing college ultimate! I really encourage kids looking for a sports experience to check it out. Injuries tend to be skin burns from sliding on the grass, or ankle injuries because the fields aren’t always very manicured…;)</p>
<p>I was secretly relieved when my kids were diagnosed with a mild bleeding disorder. It doesn’t affect their lives at all, with the exception that they’re not allowed to play football or ice hockey! Whew! My middle son would love to play, and he has the body for it, but now I can blame the doctors for not letting him.</p>
<p>You probably do have to be careful with all sports, even running. My oldest ran so much in high school that his legs are REALLY bothering him during his freshman year in college. He’s going to physical therapy, but it’s a long haul. The other harm he suffered from running was getting a bad bite on the butt from a poodle when he was practicing for cross country in a local park!</p>
<p>I had a bad concussion from an equestrian accident when I was a young teen and have never been the same, and now it seems like it takes a lot less of an impact to really hurt me. I retired from riding and now that that’s out of the way it doesn’t generally affect day to day life, but I was very lucky and I did have to retire from sports before I wanted to. </p>
<p>Incidentally, what the trainers always tell worried parents when it comes to showjumping is, “well, it’s safer than football.”</p>
<p>My father was 100% against me letting my son play football. H would have let him, I was with my dad on this one, S rowed all through HS, his BS required all freshman to play a sport. The funny thing was, a few kids who went out for crew left after a few days to join football because crew was too physically demanding. The only injury he ever got was a puuled quad, painful but non threatening. Oh and he got some insanely nasty blisters. I recently saw a news report linking concussions to ALS. They reported on the relatively high incidence of ALS among football players. It was rather frightening.</p>
<p>I think this post also highlights that the physique of the child is an aspect too. Our 2 boys could not be more physically different if we tried. Our eldest is 5’10, 140 lbs, perfect frame for swimming, soccer and TKD. All sports that he excelled in because of his body frame. Our youngest is 6’4+ and weighs 240 lbs. His physique is not built for those sports. </p>
<p>We placed these facts also into the equation. Our youngest did TKD, soccer and baseball, but it was like trying to put a square peg into a round hole. He could never find the right position to play. Our eldest OTOH minute one was like a fish to water in his sports. IMHPO, it was because their bodies were built that way.</p>
<p>Our eldest would probably be a great special teams player, but at the size he is, I sure as heck wouldn’t want him running down the field to meet his brother.</p>
<p>BTW both of our kids were recruited by coaches to play their sports because the coaches saw their frames and knew they were a perfect fit for the sport. Our youngest was actually in TKD 1st (for about 1 yr), the Master approached us to ask if we would enroll our eldest in his olympic team. We did, under his guidance DS was state champ multiple times, and a bronze jr olympic champ too. He never asked our youngest to be on the team. Why? Because he was not the right fit.</p>
<p>You’re so right Pima – at 14, S is 5’10" and 150 lbs. His friends who do FB are all built like refrigerators – dense and solid. That’s not him. He has the body of a swimmer, tennis player, or (I hope) rower. You can’t work against your body type and expect any kind of long term success.</p>
Not good news!!!