This is another controversial topic among parents, and a lot of parents these days don’t let their kids play football because of head injury risks. I know some parents who won’t let their kids play soccer, wrestling, hockey, or lacrosse because of head injury risks too. A lot of parents say kids should pursue what they are passionate about, but there are obviously limits to that from a parental perspective. So how do you stand on this issue? If you oppose letting your kids play football, would you at least approve of them playing a position like kicker where it’s safer?
I would not let mine play tackle football. He did play flag.
He’s small and skinny but forgetting that, all these lifers - so many can’t walk, bend - do anything. Why set your life up for this pain.
I love football. I watch football. But it should be banned, quite honestly. The camraderie isn’t worth the head trauma, broken bones, higher rate of ALS and more.
In my opinion, of course.
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My S was small, so he wasn’t interested in football or other sports in which he would have been at a physical disadvantage. I was glad, TBH. My FIL played college football, and his Parkinson’s may have been attributed to that. My SIL played in high school, and I don’t know whether he’d be on board for his kid playing … they only have a D, though, and she has no interest in that sort of thing, so we’ll never know.
My FIL said that he would do it again, because it was his ticket out of a very poor upbringing. I think that there are a lot of people who feel this way, but it makes me sad that anyone would feel the need to sacrifice themselves as a way to get out of a bad situation.
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No I would not.
I would not but I did let my daughter ride and jump horses.
If I had any sons, then I would have tried to strongly discouraged them from playing football. Head injuries are indeed my biggest concern. However the potential use of performance enhancing drugs would also concern me.
We insisted on helmets for skiing, bicycling, and when it came up horse riding. I was not happy at all when my older daughter took up horse riding, but I guess I lost that one relatively thoroughly.
Fair enough. How would you feel about other contact sports like lacrosse, wrestling, or hockey?
It’s an interesting question.
My kids played soccer. Heading isn’t healthy and there could be fast collisions, no pads.
Lacrosse - don’t know enough about. They wear headgear but I hear its dangerous.
At least wrestling they are not running into each other at full speed.
Hockey - I’ve met many kids (college age) - their badge of honor is no teeth.
I guess, if they came to me and wanted to play sports, I’d probably not block the others but after seeing some of them, I might be uneasy.
I guess it’s hard to know as I didn’t have the situation. Both played soccer. Then my son played tennis, my daughter reffed soccer and that was that.
My father was a football player and suffered from CTE. My brother was not allowed to play football, but did play soccer (goalie), suffered his fair share of concussions, and feels like he has been effected by head trauma as well
My father didn’t have a name for it at the time, but knew that there was something wrong when he made us promise to never have our kids play. S23 went through 18 months of vision therapy and they cautioned us that if he ever had a concussion he’d probably need to do it again. What did S23 do as soon as he got to boarding school ? Sign up for football. He is very small and got no playing time freshman year. I was probably the only parent happy to have their kid sitting on the bench. Sophomore year they figured out how fast and athletic he was and that wrestling takedowns also made for a good tackler. He played every play ( offense, defense and special teams) from then on. It was 8 man football which seemed like there was more running and not as much tackling but I still didn’t like it. Luckily, he only experienced a few hard tackles.
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So interesting. I will say it’s how your program is set up. My son played tackle football travel starting at around 9-12 year’s old. He didn’t play in high school since his school didn’t have a team but was being recruited.
His team’s were city league teams with excellent coaches and teaching proper technique. One coach was an ex qb that played on Green Bay.
I was the team dad coach /doctor. Extremely few injuries in the 4 year’s he played to anyone. All were minor.
I knew many on other team’s as well. Proper technique and proper gear helps. But of course things can happen. I treated one kid for sprained ankle during a game.
I personally wrestled varsity for 4 year’s. I don’t remember anyone getting hurt. There are always sprained finger’s and things. It’s college wrestling not what you see on TV.
My son also did contact karate. But these were highly regulated “friendly” matches again not what you see on TV with mma fighting.
Basketball actually has close to the amount of football injuries and gymnastics has more then basketball. We could talk all day about competitive dancing from my year’s treating patients in my sports medicine practice.
So it’s not just the contact
But I get the conversation.
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As someone who worked with people with head/brain injuries, my s’s did not play rough contact sports. One did soccer briefly but switched to baseball, and later did varsity ultimate frisbee and paintball. Started a competitive paintball team at his college.
He did have a concussion when playing frisbee in HS. They let him back in the game sooner than I would have liked (when I found out). I was nonplussed to say the least.
Older s was an Eagle Scout and a runner. Both are skiers.
We let our S play football in first grade, and that was it. He wanted to continue and we said nope. I have been a lifelong football fan, but after that, we didn’t re-up our Big10 season football tickets, and watched far fewer games on tv.
The issue is repeated head impacts (RHI), not concussions. RHIs are what lead to cognitive issues and ultimately CTE. Add in the increased ALS rate among former players, like tsbna mentioned, especially college and NFL. Not to mention all the musculoskeletal injuries, which of course happen in other sports (high school football has the highest rate there too, just like in RHIs and concussions. I think gymnastics isn’t tracked at the HS level due to low participation.)
To those who say the new ‘heads up’ tackling initiatives are better…sure. Better than what? Bottom line, if football didn’t exist, and someone proposed starting it up knowing all of the data we have regarding injury/health outcomes and impacts, I doubt many people would support it.
A landmark study showed high school football RHIs average 652 per 14 week season (by position varies) per player. Cumulative Head Impact Burden in High School Football - PMC
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We had a similar thread a while back: Would you let your kids play contact sports.
We did not face this with our son who rowed, but we would not have allowed any sport with a high incidence of head injury, not just football.
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The repeated low impact head injury and concussion (higher impact) are both significantly problematic. Back when concussion protocols were being developed, there was not only less focus (awareness) of the impact (pun intended) of repeated low impact head injuries, but some of the protocols had flaws as they didn’t have sufficient baseline effort measure built in, and players learned that if they purposely scored low on some baseline measures, they wouldn’t look that bad when assessed after a significant head blow, and would be allowed to return to play perhaps sooner than was advisable.
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Our kids were both very talented musicians. Musicians can’t afford to injure their hands. So…neither was interested in or played any contact sports. (They ran cross country, played tennis, and swam).
During swim season, the team was specifically told…no sports where they could be injured…and this included skiing.
This thread has been closed as it was originated by an account that had previously been banned.
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