How to Protect Our Youth Against Head Injuries and Concussions

How can we protect our children against concussions and head injuries? Common sense should tell us that we do all within our power to ensure that our children are protected from these injuries. It is important that parents and coaches remember and are aware that while children are young, their brains are still forming. Their vulnerability to concussions and head trauma is much greater than that of an adult because a child's head, for the first eight years of their lives, is disproportionately large for the rest of their body and their necks are weak.

Many doctors and neurosurgeons are calling for rule changes in many of the sports so that concussions can be eliminated. It is suggested that while helmets protect the skull, they don't protect the brain from slamming against the skull during a collision or a hit on the head. It's the brain being slammed that causes a concussion.

Tackle football is one of the sports at the top of the list that is putting young people at tisk although hockey and even soccer follow closely behind in the concussions experienced by young people. Sports has a lot to offer children but there must be a way to safeguard our young people. It is difficult to do because many children like the roughness of these sports as do many of the coaches and parents but it must be done if we are going to properly protect our children.

Little is known as yet, or at least not that has been officially verified, concerning the results of head hits received by a nine or ten year old child and how they will manifest in someone twenty-five or thirty or even fifty years old.

However, I can tell you what I have experienced. At sixteen years of age, I was involved in a car accident, receiving a concussion which knocked me out momentarily. I appeared not to have any symptoms except recurring headaches. However, I must point out that this was before concussions were considered as serious as they now know them to be. When I was thirty-five, I suffered my first mild seizure. I did not experience another one for some years when I again had another mild seizure. Several years later, while working in an extremely stressful work environment, I began experiencing seizures, still mild, but on a regular basis, sometimes as many as six a day. The result was that I was forced to leave this place of employment and went on medication. That was a few years ago and have been fortunate not to have experienced anymore seizures.

Now my concussion was a result of a car accident and therefore, unavoidable. But to let our children play sports that have the known likelihood of them receiving a concussion or other head trauma, to me seems irresponsible. Perhaps as parents and coaches, we can institute rules to protect them against this risk. I believe that if we don't do something, we are being negligent.

Some of the recommendations that have been suggested for children and young people are: touch football instead of tackle football; no heading the ball in soccer for young children and, no full body contact while playing hockey.

Our children are important to us and so their safety, for not only today, but also their safety for the future, must be of prime importance to us as parents and coaches.