Selecting A Sport, Part 5

Think About Physical Health

Each year over 4 million kids visit emergency rooms as a result of sports injuries—a fourfold increase since 1995! As kids’ sports have hit “the fast lane” with longer seasons, more sports, harder training, young bodies have suffered.

Children’s hearts cause only minor concern since they can withstand nearly any test of endurance. But the overuse of joints (e.g., shoulders and knees) can cause serious damage because the bones of pre-teen kids are still growing. The problem with overuse injuries is that some are hard to detect: no blood, no bruises, no broken bones. Even x-rays or MRI’s may not reveal anything. As a result, parents have to depend on their child’s self-report. “But what if my child is faking it?” Even if he is, he may be telling you something important—for some reason he doesn’t want to compete.

In former days, children often played sports without adults present. If a child hurt his arm throwing a baseball, he probably went home and rested it. But now he has multiple coaches and his parents to please. He hears them say foolish things like: “You just need to learn how to play through the pain.”

Some sports are more likely to cause injuries. A boy who played high school football in 2006 in South Dakota was seven times more likely to receive a season-ending injury than a boy playing basketball! In a recent season, the University of Georgia lost 19 football players to season-ending injuries.

A chief concern in football is the potential for concussions. One survey found that 61% of NFL players had experienced at least one concussion and one-fourth of them had had three or more. Those who had concussions reported increased problems with memory, concentration, speech impediments, and headaches. Another study reported that Alzheimer's appeared far more often among retired NFL players than the national average—19 times the rate for men ages 30 through 49!

Fortunately, football officials are listening to these statistics. High school referees now commonly remove players who show any sign of a concussion, not just when an athlete loses consciousness. If trainers even suspect a concussion, the player may not return to the game. Unfortunately, many high schools don’t have a doctor or athletic trainer present to evaluate athletes. Some schools claim they can’t afford a trainer. But one expert believes “that means you can't afford to have a program. The presence of a certified athletic trainer makes your program safer by every measure, and if you can't afford to make the program safe, then you should be closing it up.”

Sports injuries can be avoided if parents understand how a particular sport stresses children’s bodies. For example:

• Pre-teen runners should run no more than 3 miles a day because the growth plates at the end of bones are vulnerable to injury.
• Soccer and basketball players may need extra support for their ankles with all their stopping, starting and cutting.
• Baseball pitchers, especially in the pre-teen years, should have their innings strictly limited. I know a father who keeps a pitch count for his son and won't let him pitch when he reaches the limit.
• Some medical experts believe that young female runners who over train are more vulnerable to injury than boys because their bodies mature differently.
• Don’t let your young child specialize. She should play a variety of sports because each sport will stress different body parts.

Finally, Dr. Stuart Brown, who directs the National Institute for Play, believes that risk is an important part of children’s play: “I don’t want to foster broken bones and concussions. But an inherent part of being playful is taking risk. What you don’t want to do is have the risks be excessive.” He is concerned about parents who hover over their kids, thus limiting their freedom to explore, to risk. He observes that children’s playgrounds demonstrate this over-concern: “There are no teeter totters and most of the swings don’t really go very high, and the monkey bars can only be three feet high. You know, it’s reasonable to have safe playgrounds, but it’s also reasonable to have challenging playgrounds.” When we are overly protective of our kids, we may  be “keeping their bodies safe while we are endangering their souls.”