I know a LOT of us have kids and/or grandkids who play sports. While I have known about the dangers of head injuries, I was unaware of the lasting effects they can have on a person. Given that most of our kids play on teams that do not have professional coaches or even coaches with training in head injuries or other injuries, I think that every single one of us should watch the film "Head Games".
Given the challenges our difficult children already have, head injuries can be a real and scary threat. especially because most people don't even really understand what a concussion is and is not. Just because you can walk and 'shake it off' after a few minutes or you don't have blurry vision or double vision or nausea does NOT mean you did not get a concussion! The damage that is done is very scary and if we don't know about it we cannot make informed decisions about what is and is not an acceptable risk for ourselves and our kids.
while we can't, and shouldn't, protect our kids from every potential harm, we do need to stay informed about the dangers they face. For my children, esp Wiz and Jess, that danger was on the soccer field. I have a cousin who is a physical therapist with Mayo and she strongly urged that I prohibit ALL headers for my kids. Our local league rules said that a child had to be 14 before they could do headers in a game and my cousin said this was just guaranteed to create serious problems down the road for them. I had more than a few coaches who got really upset that I wanted to at least enforce the league rules (J had to stop playing at age 12 due to her health issues not related to sports and Wiz chose to stop even earlier) and to NOT have the kids practicing headers at the grand old age of 8 or 10 due to the risk of injury - and not just my kids.
I didn't have a clue about concussions and other brain injuries, I was more worried about the muscles and vertebrae and the spinal cord being injured. Had I known about concussions, etc... I would have been even more adamant about it.
What do you think about the movie, and the risk of injury in sports? Would you push for changes in sports, esp for your child, after seeing the movie and the info on concussions? Did you know that even a very mild concussion is a serious injury? I sure didn't.
Here is a link to the movie on hulu (not sure if you need hulu plus to watch it here) :
It is also on Xfinity if you have that service (may be able to sign in via your cable tv co): http://xfinitytv.comcast.net/watch/...ies#filter=online&episode=7343234384976252112
If you have Amazon Prime, you can watch it for free here: http://www.amazon.com/Head-Games-Cindy-Parlow-Cone/dp/B009ENK7KW
Here it is for free on snagfilm: http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/head_games
So what do you think?
Given the challenges our difficult children already have, head injuries can be a real and scary threat. especially because most people don't even really understand what a concussion is and is not. Just because you can walk and 'shake it off' after a few minutes or you don't have blurry vision or double vision or nausea does NOT mean you did not get a concussion! The damage that is done is very scary and if we don't know about it we cannot make informed decisions about what is and is not an acceptable risk for ourselves and our kids.
while we can't, and shouldn't, protect our kids from every potential harm, we do need to stay informed about the dangers they face. For my children, esp Wiz and Jess, that danger was on the soccer field. I have a cousin who is a physical therapist with Mayo and she strongly urged that I prohibit ALL headers for my kids. Our local league rules said that a child had to be 14 before they could do headers in a game and my cousin said this was just guaranteed to create serious problems down the road for them. I had more than a few coaches who got really upset that I wanted to at least enforce the league rules (J had to stop playing at age 12 due to her health issues not related to sports and Wiz chose to stop even earlier) and to NOT have the kids practicing headers at the grand old age of 8 or 10 due to the risk of injury - and not just my kids.
I didn't have a clue about concussions and other brain injuries, I was more worried about the muscles and vertebrae and the spinal cord being injured. Had I known about concussions, etc... I would have been even more adamant about it.
What do you think about the movie, and the risk of injury in sports? Would you push for changes in sports, esp for your child, after seeing the movie and the info on concussions? Did you know that even a very mild concussion is a serious injury? I sure didn't.
Here is a link to the movie on hulu (not sure if you need hulu plus to watch it here) :
It is also on Xfinity if you have that service (may be able to sign in via your cable tv co): http://xfinitytv.comcast.net/watch/...ies#filter=online&episode=7343234384976252112
If you have Amazon Prime, you can watch it for free here: http://www.amazon.com/Head-Games-Cindy-Parlow-Cone/dp/B009ENK7KW
Here it is for free on snagfilm: http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/head_games
So what do you think?