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That's an exact quote, me to my son's football coach who was handing me football equipment and saying things like "try this on him" as I had any earthly clue what I was doing.
My son is playing pee wee football. yes, the seven year old. Why you ask? Good question. Because if it were up to me, he wouldn't play. I'm concerned about injuries, though I know the risk is very very slight, much slighter than the risk my daughter the gymnast takes with her year-round workouts that pound the joints. Still, seven seems awfully young. But my husband points out that this is the south, where football rules and no one gets much playing time around here if they don't already have several years of experience under their belt by the time they get to jr high. They even use the same play book and same system in Pee Wee football as the high school, so that when the kids move up they are already familiar with the way the coaches call plays. *shakes head* Unreal.
It's full contact too, full pads, just miniature versions of them. And tomorrow, after a week's worth of practice in shorts, we start practice in full pads and helmets. So today, Belle is staring at a pair of pants with all kinds of pockets in them and a plastic bag full of pads trying to figure out how to assemble this thing. They don't come with instructions. Not even a diagram! I'm on the phone with hubby, who is at the fire station and won't get home before time to leave for practice in the morning and he's saying things like "put in the knee and thigh pads, then if it's tight you can snap in the hip and butt pads after you've pulled the pants up."
Excuse me? Give me dance uniforms with sequins. Give me leotards with rows of rhinestones - I'm good with that. But this boy stuff is unfamiliar territory.
He practices something like 10-12 hours a week! That just seems so out there for seven. But so far he loves it. And they practice in evening hours when it's cooler and take frequent water breaks. Like I said before, my daughter the gymnast is probably at higher risk of injury but still, I'm overhwhelmed by how ....serious this is.
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Football doesn't make much sense to me, but I'm not a guy, so perhaps that's the problem. Good on you for helping your son with something he's enjoying so much, even when it's foreign to you! Do you know any of the other pee-wee parents that could help you assemble his gear?
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Gymnastics is safer*. Concussions are a part of American football; especially since mandatory helmets make use of the head as a battering ram into common practice. Concussions also play a strong part in development of learning disabilities and future neurological disorders, including early onset Alzheimers.
* If one believes that brain damage is worse than other physical impairments.
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Well, considering the recommendations regarding playing time at different ages, etc., I would probably not let my 7 year old play tackle football. But if you're gonna do it, at least you've got pads, right? 'Round here most little kids play soccer at that age, and they don't even wear helmets, and that can get awful rough.
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Oh c'mon. It's just football. Sure, it can be dangerous, but so can riding a bicycle, skateboarding, climbing a tree, diving and pretty much everything else kids like to do outside. As long as they're under supervision and there are contengencies for the worst case scenario, the kid should be able to do what he loves.
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good old american football, the greatest crippler of young adults. Auto accidents, number two and MS in at a distant third.
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quote:Concussions are a part of American football; especially since mandatory helmets make use of the head as a battering ram into common practice
Any kid who uses his head while tackling has not been taught correctly. It's a poor football coach who doesn't drill into them from the first day how important it is not to tackle with your head. It will also get you immediately ejected if you do it in a game. I don't know much about football, but I know that!
And what makes you think concussions aren't part of gymnastics? Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: Concussions are a part of American football; especially since mandatory helmets make use of the head as a battering ram into common practice.
That is a huge overstatement. While it certainly is true that some people get concussions from playing football, I can only recall three or four people at most getting a concussion during the seven years I played. Of course, this is only anecdotal evidence, and if you have any reliable studies that counter this, feel free to post them.
As for using the helmet as a battering ram, that is certainly not true in my experience. When I played, we spent a lot of time practicing proper form for tackling and blocking, and the head was never used to hit people. It does happen, but when it occurs it is generally due to bad form, not a deliberate choice.
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As much as I'm against perpetuating the football establishment, I have to say: as long as he is having fun, that is the most important thing. The continuation of his fun depends on the safety practices of the coach, and how well the coach teaches the children to carry on those safety precautions.
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As the mother of 5 girls and one boy, I can certainly relate. My son was an uber-jock - lettering in track and football and winning the state championship in wrestling. I never quite got used to him coming home with bruises and black eyes and concussions, but he loved it. And I have to say, one of the best decisions he ever made was to take up wrestling. It taught him discipline, and paid for his college education.
So my advice is to encourage him as long as he likes it. You may be surprised at how much you enjoy watching him play. I don't enjoy watching professional sports of any persuasion, but I LOVE watching my son wrestle and my girls play basketball. Equally as much as I enjoy watching my daughters sing and dance.
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quote:Originally posted by ricree101: As for using the helmet as a battering ram, that is certainly not true in my experience. When I played, we spent a lot of time practicing proper form for tackling and blocking, and the head was never used to hit people. It does happen, but when it occurs it is generally due to bad form, not a deliberate choice.
Agreed. There is a huge emphasis, particularly after the NFL's recent concussion study and advisories, on proper tackling form for all players, especially children. You're not supposed to tackle head-first; in fact, it's actively discouraged. Particularly the helmet-to-helmet contacts.
It could be worse. It could be rugby and your son could go to the doctor and get someone else's tooth removed from his head. Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
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quote:The latest participation figures show 1,500,000 players participating in junior and senior high school football and 75,000 in college football. Table II illustrates the incidence of spinal cord injuries for both high school and college participants. The incidence rate per 100,000 participants in 2006 is less than one per 100,000 at the high school level (0.53) and 2.66 at the college level. In looking at the incidence rates for the past 30 years, the high school incidence is 0.52 per 100,000 participants and the college incidence is 1.47 per 100,000 participants.
quote:Experts believe that as many as one million kids play age-group football in the United States. (There is no national body that oversees age-group football.) Some 170,000 kids play Pop Warner, which is similar in organization to Little League baseball. Pop Warner, which is for kids ages 7 to 16, has very strict safety rules against which all youth football programs should be measured.
"Safety is always a concern in our program," says Ralph Dumican, who is in his eleventh year of coaching Pop Warner teams in North Attleboro, Mass. "Our coaches attend several clinics each year, and they're well versed in coaching, conditioning, and safety. Frankly, many more of our kids get hurt riding bikes, climbing trees, or in-line skating than they do playing football."
Pop Warner has never had a player fatality in its 67-year history. And studies show that most youth football programs are relatively safe. In a recent study, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission examined athletic injuries on a sport-by-sport basis. It found that organized football 5-to-15 year-olds had 12 % fewer injuries per capita than organized soccer for the same age group. Football also had 50% fewer injuries than bike riding and 74% fewer than skateboarding.
In my experience with other sports - what the guy from Pop Warner said is true. My daughter's gymnastics team last year had three girls break their arms or legs. Not one of them did it in the gym. Not one of them did it doing gymnastics. They were injuries that occurred in their normal playtime riding bikes or something else.
So, while naturally I'm concerned about the possibility of injury with all my kids, I don't stress over it too much.
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Everybody places their line of acceptable risk at a different location. I'm fortunate enough to have put mine in the correct place -- everybody else is either overly cautious or reckless.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: In my experience with other sports - what the guy from Pop Warner said is true. My daughter's gymnastics team last year had three girls break their arms or legs. Not one of them did it in the gym. Not one of them did it doing gymnastics. They were injuries that occurred in their normal playtime riding bikes or something else.
So, while naturally I'm concerned about the possibility of injury with all my kids, I don't stress over it too much.
Agreed. I'm not a big fan of football, but I'd certainly consider it if my son were interested.
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I played organized football from 5th grade through age 22, and had (I think) one mild concussion. That's above average, in my experience, and it was from a collision I didn't see coming.
In my life thus far, my most serious injuries have all come playing basketball. I've never done worse to myself playing football than large, colorful, and interesting bruises.
[ August 03, 2007, 06:29 PM: Message edited by: El JT de Spang ]
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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My brothers never played football. They played soccer, basketball, or baseball instead. It was while playing baseball, that one of my brothers received a line drive to his face. He was immediately knocked unconscious and suffered facial fractures. The dentist said he would have lost all of his teeth if hadn't been wearing braces. Stuck on a liquid diet, he lost a lot of weight and became very weak while strongly to stay conscious under bottles and bottles of pain killers and other medications. We are so thankfully that he recovered and you can't even tell he was hit. I still feel sick when I think about the chance that some of the fractured bone could have gone into his brain.
Afterwards, he continued to play basketball with a mouthguard which protected him from the numerous rough falls he took in that sport.
Any sport carries a risk. But I agree that you're alot more likely to be hurt rollerskating or riding a bike. I would be less worried about him at this age. I went to a high school that had quite a few Texas State Championship titles and you'd hear horror stories about players in and out of sports clinics for torn knees or battered spines.
But they wouldn't have given it up for anything. They had a passion that made them happy. They found lifelong friends. They were disciplined and did incredibly well in their academic subjects. If your son really enjoys this, makes new friends, and grows as a person, then I think its a good choice.
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A Minor league first base coach was hit and killed by a line drive not too long ago. Baseball can be wicked dangerous for sure.
But so can driving, biking, hiking, building a fire, using tools, and riding elevators. In short, living is dangerous. Aside from the very obvious fact that very nearly everyone who lives, dies; almost anything useful or pleasurable involves, really, a significant risk, even if we don't acknowledge it.
But if you want a really dangerous sport, try Rodeo. I have a friend who is an orthopedic surgeon in Lubbock, Texas, which is *the* major trauma center for pretty much all of west Texas and parts of New Mexico. I asked him if knee injuries to football players (football is REALLY BIG in west Texas) were his most common case. He said, "nope, thumbs."
"thumbs?"
"Rodeo... calf ropers or bull riders get their thumb caught in the rope and it just comes right off... the thumb isn't built to take those kind of forces and once the bone breaks, there's pretty much nothing keeping it there.... so I re-attach them. That's my most common surgery."
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I didn't know anyone who played football in elementary school. Just didn't happen around here at all. Baseball yes, soccer yes, teeny wrestling sadly yes. Basketball of course wasn't played it was worshipped and studied. By high school it wasn't the football players that were hurt, it was everyone else, though my high school did have a well respected football team (as in current Bears starting quarterback was on it just before I was in high school).
The sport I would never let my kid near is Wrestling but it's also the one I was closest to.
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I doubt that 7-year-olds are big and heavy enough to do each other major damage, for the same reason that it's mainly heavyweight boxers who are killed in the ring.
I have had 2 friends with career-ending and life-changing knee injuries from JUNIOR high school football. One of them would have probably played varsity basketball for UNC-Chapel Hill, he was that good.
I have two other friends, one of which had a broken jaw, the other a broken collarbone, from high school football.
When the people get big, it's a dangerous sport.
What do you have against wrestling, breyerchic? Besides the stupid weightloss methods.
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The injuries and culture I witnessed from my friends that wrestled. But as I've said before I don't think my highschool's athletics department is standard.
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: Still, seven seems awfully young. But my husband points out that this is the south, where football rules and no one gets much playing time around here if they don't already have several years of experience under their belt by the time they get to jr high.
This is completely untrue. You will not be able to tell how well a kid can play football by seeing how he plays at the age of seven. Their bodies will be completely different even by the time they're 12 or 13 (not to mention by the time they're high school age), and their style of play will change accordingly. Any coach who tries to recruit at Peewee games has a few screws loose.
My parents didn't let my little brother play Peewee football (we live in the South too, and poor Jeff always begged). My dad didn't want him to learn any bad habits. Once he hit Jr. High everyone was, quite literally, on the same playing field talent wise. The difference is that the coaches at the schools are paid to keep the kids safe and teach them proper technique.
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saracasticmuppet, it's not about skill. It's about knowledge and exposure to the game. By the time they're in junior high, the kids who've been playing since seven know the playbook (one would hope) better than the ones who don't. That's why they use the same playbook in pee wee football as the high school does - so the kids have years to learn it.
No one expects them to develop all the necessary skills by that time, but rather the necessary knowledge.
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He could always play baseball. Although they're not as armoured in baseball, they do have a big, heavy stick.
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Everybody places their line of acceptable risk at a different location. I'm fortunate enough to have put mine in the correct place -- everybody else is either overly cautious or reckless.
What a vicious lie. Posting on hatrack is easily the most reckless and foolhardy thing a person can do. It saps the wits and drains one's sanity!
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I've never seen a high school in Alabama with a turf football field. Maybe it's because we get more rainfall and it's easier to grow grass here? The thought of a high school with turf is just....weird.
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Belle, I don't think it's rainfall, that's the reason IN is switching to them. So there is less mud.
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Yeah. Antibiotic reistance is continuing to spread -- now the bad bugs which used to be bred pretty exclusively in the hospitals are out in the community.
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I’ve always thought the scariest sport was hockey. In northern MN where I grew up, hockey was the big sport. The combination of that hard puck, a long hockey stick, and full body checks into the boards made for a lot of blood and broken bones. By comparison, football is controlled and reasonably safe.
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I guess my problem with wrestling is the fasting or binging to make weight. Along with the insane training, obsessive coaches, and messed up traditions.
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Well, I saw my first ever injury in the gym the other day. A girl on my daughter's team broke her hand. Weird, strange occurrence. She did a handstand on the beam, which every girl on the team has done thousands of times. Somehow her weight shifted funny, and it popped her thumb out. We thought it was just dislocated, but unfortunately it's broken.
My daughter remains uninjured in gymnastics, except for bumps and bruises and rips (rips are pieces of skin that get pulled off your hand by the uneven bars). I guess that's not technically "uninjured." Oh well, I still maintain it does her a lot more good than harm.
My son enjoyed football. he wasn't very good at it, but he stuck with it all season and tried hard. he enjoyed the games for the most part, and was really proud of the trophy he got at the end of the year. The football team had no major injuries, and made it to the playoffs but they lost in the second round.
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Belle, I thought of you this evening while I was sitting in the ER of the children's hospital with my son. (He swallowed a quarter, no biggie.) There was a teenage boy next to us in a wheelchair waiting for his x-rays with his arm in a sling. I asked him what happened and he told me he had broken his (at this point he jabbed his index finger toward his neck) playing football.
"Clavicle?" I asked.
"No. It was my collarbone," he said.
Anyway, he assured me football is perfectly safe for my six-year-old because little kids can't tackle hard enough to cause injury. But all I could think was what if he loves it so much he wants to play forever? Eeek!
edit: And for the record, pee wee football in Dallas is BRUTAL. The parents are so anal!
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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On turf fields: All 3 schools in my district got their football, tennis, soccer, baseball --Fields redone a couple years ago with turf fields. I find it ironic that this was followed by a continuing funding crisis that caused a change from block scheduling to trimesters at our highschools. I know the grant money was for new fields, but I just feel that that grant should not have existed if they could have just put that money into paying our teachers.
On Football: I'm not a big fan. I don't follow professional sports. It feels misguided to me to teach kids that slamming into each other is ok on any level. But then I don't play any ball/puck related sports seriously and I'm not sure my opinion carries much weight, not having anything other than my gut feeling to go by. And that feeling is that the risk of injury and the encouragement of the violence necessary to play foodball, is unacceptable.
My teacher once told me "I haven't supported football since I saw a kid paralyzed on the field." I'm right there with her.
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I have two friends who received career-ending knee injuries in Junior High football practice. One of them would probably have been a basketball star at UNC-Chapel Hill eventually.
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quote:One of them would probably have been a basketball star at UNC-Chapel Hill eventually.
And you could tell this, because of how they played basketball in junior high? That he would have been recruited by one of, if not the, most presitigious college basketball programs in the country? Color me skeptical.
For every story you can tell me of how football ruined someone's life and career I can match it with hundreds of stories of lives and careers ruined by car accidents. Or, on the flip side, stories of people who played pee wee and high school athletics who credit those experiences with instilling discipline and a work ethic in them that has served them well in their adult lives.
There is no such thing as a "safe" activity. It's just not the world we live in. I got news for you - kids who remain perfectly safe in their homes and never play "dangerous" sports like football aren't going to get college scholarships to premier athletic institutions either.
OF COURSE young athletes get hurt playing athletics - OF COURSE some get hurt so badly they never can move onto the next level - the risk of injury is one reason reaching that level is so difficult! I know a gymnast who had a college scholarship offer and had to turn it down because of a severe ankle injury sustained by tumbling. Did gymnastics "ruin" her chances to be a college level gymnast? No, without gymnastics she never would have had the opportunity in the first place. And if you ask her today if she regrets it she'll look at you like you're mad. She loved the sport so much she now coaches young gymnasts, including my daughter.
The fact is the literature bears out that in the vast, vast majority of the cases pee wee football is completely safe for participants. Risks go up as kids get older and heavier and more mature, but with proper technique it's still extremely safe. Regardless, any child is statistically safer on a playing field that they are riding to and from that field in a car.
Even though my daughter is only 10 and hardly the most elite athlete in the world, gymnastics has been so beneficial to her. She's learned the value of hard work and dedication, she's learned how to take care of her body and eat right and stay fit and strong, she's learned that when you fall off the beam in a competition, even if you're upset and hurt you still have to get back on and do your best. She's learned how to take severe disappointment and still remain a good sport and congratulate the victor and then go back and work even harder so next time it might be your turn. She's learned the satisfaction of hitting a skill you've been working on for months and finally knowing the joy of seeing your hard work pay off. And then realize that you have to keep up your strength training, stretching, and hard hours in the gym if you want to keep that skill. She's learned teamwork and supporting your friends and the bonds that come from sweating, bleeding, and crying together.
All the medals she's won in the last two years are meaningless next to the greatest things she's gotten out of this sport - character. And while it's certainly not the only way to build character, I submit organized sports does a darn find job of it.
[ December 22, 2007, 01:27 PM: Message edited by: Belle ]
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I've never heard UNC-Chapel Hill called that pristegious for basketball. And one of my mom's former students went there for exactly that reason (Sean May). I grew up at IU, with the third most ncaa titles in bball ever.
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Do you know any of the other pee-wee parents that could help you assemble his gear?
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A much better sport.
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Oh well, I still maintain it does her a lot more good than harm. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
