One of the first lessons you learn as a parent is that you are going to start worrying a lot more about things. If you worried a lot about yourself in the past, that concern doesn’t hold a candle to the things you worry about on behalf of your child. It’s one thing to be responsible for your own life. It’s another thing entirely to be responsible for the life of another human.
First, you start to worry about whether they are ever going to crawl … and then walk … and then run! And then once they’re actually mobile, you fear they’re going to fall and bump their head while they stumble like a drunken sailor around your house, which all of the sudden resembles a scene from the Hunger Games --- Where did all of these sharp corners come from? How did you not ever notice them before?
Then, when they get a little older, you worry about whether you have them in enough activities. Gross motor skills are very important to development, you’re told. They should probably be in at least four or five organized physical activities a week, right?
So you start researching what sports to sign them up for - and that’s when a whole new dish of worries falls on your plate. You can’t watch the news lately without hearing about another child being injured in an organized sport, or a professional athlete suing for traumatic brain damage they sustained on the job.
The truth is, sports are dangerous! In fact, 21% of traumatic brain injuries in children are caused by sports. And 2 million high school athletes are injured each year. So it’s important to educate yourself on the facts and take precautions to keep your children safe. Because, while sports are dangerous, they are very valuable too.
Organized sports encourage:
And those benefits are just the beginning. If you are worrying, it means you are a good parent. Do your research, understand the data behind the sports injuries, and make informed decisions. To get you started, here are some of the most surprising sports injury statistics you may not realize.