Most sports are fine, but not tackle football, since the Ben Abercrombie story remains in my mind (first play, Harvard freshman year, normal tackle).
Soccer concussions are not in fact caused by heading the ball but by random accidents (colliding with other players, the ground, the goal, etc). Believe me, I have researched this! There is a hypothesis that repeated heading causes tiny brain injuries that cumulatively causes more serious damage, but I have seen no actual evidence for this. Similarly, I have seen no evidence (reputable studies) showing long term brain damage from playing youth and college soccer.
There is a discussion of both concussions and CTE in soccer (aka football in Britain) with some study citations in this recent blog article from the British Journal of Sports Medicine:
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I am not an expert, but from what I had read it is not heading the ball which is the issue, but rather two players attempting to head the ball at the same time and the head to head contact which can cause concussion.
Sorry if I was unclear.
Edit to add: cross posted with @NiceUnparticularMan
The article is appreciated.
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Yes, as to concussions that blog article summarizes:
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Most concussive injuries in football are due to head-to-head contact rather than ball to head contact (7).
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Concussion due to head impact is caused by forces that result in head accelerations – heading a ball results in head accelerations of less than 10g, whereas the minimum required for SRC is generally 40-60g. The average head-to-head impact is typically around 25-30g (8,9).
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Players that play in positions where heading is common also have an increased risk of head-to-head collisions, mostly in aerial duels (7).
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Heading the ball can result in sub-concussive impacts – and repeated heading can contribute to cognitive impairment as a separate risk factor to concussion (10).
Those numbers in parens are citations.
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Yes
My son played contact football, karate, and baseball. Also Chess but not much contact. Lol. I wrestled in high school long ago. With proper training and technique and padding it’s not the problem people think it is. I was also the team doctor he played from 7 year old to 8th grade tackle football in a very competitive league. Besides a sprain ankle here and there and some fingers getting bent. Not really the injuries you would think Of. I did treat a kid that slid into second base and fainted (syncope). Would you pull your child from baseball? Actually saw way more injuries than tackle football.
No football. Don’t love the other sports either. I was relieved when one kid danced, one switched to music and one was a techie. There are often social consequences of course.
ps I do know kids who got concussions heading the ball but don’t know if their head collided with another head
I am not sure that as parents we have complete control here.
We did let our daughters ski, and I went skiing with them frequently. I also took many Monday afternoons off from work to ski with my daughters and their school’s ski club (about 60 afternoons over ten or eleven years). We did insist that they get helmets and use them.
I was not thrilled when one daughter took up horse riding. One cousin had been injured in a horse accident years ago. I did not prevail. At this point she owns a horse and is a veterinarian who handles large animals quite often. I guess I just lost this one rather thoroughly.
In my family quite a few of us are basically built for football. I however grew up in an area where the big sport that everyone cares about is hockey. Thus I never took football seriously. I think that it is just as well that we didn’t have any sons, because they probably would also have been built for football. I really would not be happy at all having a son playing football. “Concussions and CTE” are exactly what I would have been worried about.
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Yes, riding is, I belive, the most dangerous sport in terms of fatalities per participant. But if you are bitten by the horse bug, you are bitten!
In all my years of riding, my only injury was a broken thumb when I fell off. I still work with horses every day on the ground, but no longer ride.
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We are not a sporty family (I could not play anything if my life depended on it). We had a strict no football rule, but were up for anything else, but did not train, drill, etc. My boys played soccer in elementary school, and little league through 6th grade or so. Both were handfuls, especially S25, who was cut from soccer at age 10. S23 stuck with it longer, then did LAX in middle school (goalie) til about 7th grade, when competition gets more fierce. He flirted with cross country in HS, then that was it. He avoided injury. We would have allowed either to continue with soccer, but were relieved when we were done with LAX.
Both kids did martial arts for 12-15 years, ski/snowboard (with helmets) and S23 is a rock climber.
I would have discouraged football, but S had no interest. Both my kids played hockey through high school, but if either of them had gotten a concussion I probably would’ve had them quit. There was one boy on my son’s team that had had 4. That’s just crazy. Ironically DD did have a concussion - she got it sliding down a slip and slide while she was sitting down. So yeah accidents can happen while doing pretty much anything. She also dislocated her elbow tripping over a toy in her room.
Not knowing what I know now. I encouraged my D’s to play soccer, but none were terribly interested in it, thankfully.
I did know snough to never sign them up for competitive gymnastic even though they were interested because many of their friends were doing it.
No football (head injuries) or wrestling (cutting weight) for us.
Both of mine played rec league soccer and baseball in elementary school. S25 also did flag football at that time.
S23 ran XC and track starting in middle school and had back to back stress fractures in opposite legs and missed all of his senior year.
S25 played lacrosse (goalie) starting in late elementary school and played at a high level from middle school on. He broke his thumb and has same niggling back problems but has otherwise remained healthy. (Knock on wood.)
My son grew quickly when he was young and most of the other boys were barely up to his shoulder as he started kindergarten with feet too big for light-up sneakers. Thankfully he only ended up just over 6’1” full grown but until the other kids started catching up in height during high school, he was always one of the few big kids. I forbid him from playing football when he could have played flag because I knew he would love it and I would never be able to get him to stop playing when the game grew more dangerous with tackling. He skied and played soccer, baseball, lacrosse and ultimately settled on basketball as his year round sport. All the pop warner football coaches in town were contacting us in elementary school and the high school football coach told him he was going to follow him around the hallways everyday until he agreed to play for him.
First semester in college he went and joined the rugby team, but his opponents were mostly other NESCAC club teams, so he was very often the most athletic and strongest kid on the field so it was not that scary to watch since he was fast and hard to tackle. The team even made it to Nationals his junior spring. Although a few of his teammates suffered concussions and other rough injuries, his worst injuries luckily were black eyes and bruises.
Yes, I would let my kids play contact sports. The vast majority of kids are simply not talented enough to play sports in high level high school, college or professionally.
Earlier this year, an accomplished CrossFitter in my gym got Rhabdomyolysis and was hospitalized. Athletics and exercise bring risks.
For me, I think the better and far more important discussion would be whether I’d let my kids ride ebikes, often ridden w/o helmets, doubling up on seats at high speeds.
Yes. Both of our kids were serious musicians as well, so there were times when I was very concerned about injuries that would take them out of commission…son actually made regional band with a broken arm.
Son played youth soccer, hockey, basketball and lacrosse, but I would not let him play football before high school. He then added football in high school, and played lacrosse in HS as well, and then played football in college.
He did suffer a concussion in hockey and a broken arm, but fortunately was injury free in football and lacrosse in high school. A training injury ended his FB career in college, but it was something that could have happened literally in any sport.
Daughter played youth soccer and lacrosse, and was a serious dancer and was lucky enough to make it through HS and college injury free as well.
I’m not sure if we would have let them play football. We started them in soccer and swimming, and neither ever asked. Older S would have been broken in two in football. As a kid he was so skinny. He’s tall and broad now, but as a kid… lol. No way. Younger S was sturdier, but he loved soccer and all of his friends played too.
neither would good enough to play in college. None of them had any season injuries from soccer. The 3 broken arms came from regular playing and falling out of a tree. A stress fracture in a foot, but I’m not sure if it was cross country or soccer. He was doing both at the same time.
Football was off the table for my kid but anything else was ok with us. Growing up they played soccer, basketball and lacrosse - younger son also ski raced. Neither had any injuries growing up, but S22 has had several injuries playing high level college ultimate - two hyper-extended knees, pulled hamstring, serious turf burns etc.
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