78 Replies to “The Children Are Our Future”

  1. Use of the incorrect “your” was to give complainers something to complain about. You can say thank you…
    Aside from that, testimonials aren’t evidence.

  2. Lot of older guys in our curling wear helmets now as falling hurts. Nice thing about using the stick to throw the rock is you get to wear two non-skid overshoes, still slippery though.
    One time I was sitting on the bench in hockey and turned to watch the play and bang, the puck bounced off my cage mask. Kissed the old helmet that night.
    Still don’t wear a helmet skiing but most of my friends do now. One of my buddies was killed years ago, a paramedic and fireman, when he hit a tree at speed.

  3. “It turns out ice is slippery”
    Pretty much this. You think kids wear helmets at the start of learning hockey because of hits? They fall down because ice is slippery. Curling ice is not magically less slippery because you’re not wearing skates.
    When you fall backwards, you’re lucky if fall on your a$$, less lucky if you smash your tailbone, less lucky again if you brace yourself with your hands and smash your wrists, least lucky of all, you smack the back of your head on the ice.
    Brain injury is much much much more serious in kids than people typically think. Once you’re older your brain re-wires itself to gain back skills you have alreay acquired. As a kid, it doesn’t have these skills yet and has a very hard time learning them for the first time.
    “We did much stupider things in that past and we were fine” Of course YOU turned out fine, you survived, the other kids, the ones who did get hurt, didn’t come back to the playground again(and you forgot them).

  4. wiggs: I assume you would also advocate the mandatory use of helmets whiles driving a car. Or climbing stairs and ladders or walking on sidewalks.
    Out of curiosity how many curling related calls does a paramedic see in a year? 1 or 2? even if its only 1 (how many is a ‘many many more’?), that means there are tens of thousands of curling related head injuries every year, something needs to be done about this. I’m writing my MP and MLA right now.

  5. OMG! What kind of neglegent parent would let that child out of the house without body armour?!
    Child abuse!!

  6. “It turns out ice is slippery”
    Let me complete the rest of that sentence, “and we need a nanny to tell us ice is slippery and we also need to accept their one size fits all solutions to protect ourselves”.

  7. In 2003, an 18 year old Helena, Montana pitcher was hit on the head by a batted ball and died.
    His parents were awarded $850,000 for the failure of the Louisville Slugger Company to put warning labels on their bats.

  8. When will kids be mandated to wear helmets while walking in winter or summer, least they fall on ice or pavement when they go out even to the store?
    With respect to the Trauma response poster when does this become absurd? Humans die from injury. There is prudence than there is neurosis.

  10. Bob said: “I have heard of studies saying that bike helmets result in more head injuries,something I always suspected,anyone know anything about that?”
    Bike helmets and helmets generally result in more -neck- injuries. Increased weight on the head = increased torque on the cervical spine, particularly in little kids. Small little neck, big bowling ball head.
    But don’t tell anyone, or your kid is going to end up wearing a HANS device with their hockey helmet at the curling rink. You just know some a-hole out there is thinking about it.
    I’m with Ken Finney, I didn’t even twitch a gray cell when I saw the helmet on the kid. Water to the fish. Our local rink must be stuffed with devil-may-care Conservatives, they don’t make the Little Rocks kids wear ’em.

  11. ” Worry…WORRY HARD..!” — syncrodox earlier.
    That is good,very good,a tip of the helmet to you.

  12. Instead of mandatory helmets or mandatory gay sex education, how about teaching kids standard breakfalls in public school phys ed classes?
    It would probably do more to stave off brain injuries than helmets ever could.

  13. wiggs said: “Kids are especially prone to head injuries because their heads are proportionally larger than adults.”
    How many massively overweight kids have you seen lately because mummy won’t let them play outside in case they might get a head injury? Kids get head injuries walking in the mall too. Or playing soccer.
    wiggs, you’ve got to admit your sample is skewed. All you do all day is rescue people that got hurt, you never see the ones that -don’t- get hurt. One guy in a year gets hurt curling, you’re going to see him. Same with cops, firemen and ER docs. It looks like the world is one big war zone.

  17. 1) Kid’s skulls haven’t hardened as much as adults, so they are more at risk for head injury.
    2) Growing kids go through stages when their coordination is less than perfect. Perhaps this kid is going through such a phase.
    3) No evidence that helmets are compulsory, which I wouldn’t agree with, but parents are certainly entitled to make decisions about their own kids’ ability to avoid falling.
    4) Phantom: “Kids get head injuries.. playing soccer”. Yes. One of my best friends at high school was at soccer practice. He tried to do a bicycle kick, and heading up hitting his head severely against the goal post. He went – overnight – from being a sharp as a tack straight-A student to being, well, dull. It was painful to see him when he came back to school. You could tell he knew something was wrong, and the frustration and anger were evident. He never recovered. This is not an argument for mandatory helmets, but just a note to say head injuries can be very serious. (My elder daughter is a star soccer player, and very smart, and I tell her to avoid heading the ball – I don’t want her precious brain scrambled.) We don’t know any of the back story about this kid, so I’m willing to cede the decision of whether or not to wear a helmet to the parent.

  18. According to this site (if I’m reading things correctly), there were 236 deaths in Canada in 2004 caused by falling down steps or stairs. This is outrageous! Why hasn’t there been a mandated requirement for every home and multi-story building to have helmets available at the top and bottom of every stairwell?
    http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mor_fal_on_and_fro_sta_and_ste-mortality-fall-stairs-steps
    Slightly off-topic but still regarding curling, why hasn’t Harley-Davidson become an official sponsor of the Brier yet? After all, they can put their ads right along the ‘hog’ line.

  19. TEACHING BREAKFALLS in public school phys ed classes would prevent brain injuries from falls more than anything short forcing everyone to wear helmets 24×7.
    But I doubt very much that our school boards will ever do this since they are too busy teaching my kids how their biological sex is only a social construct.

  20. As a general observation, when one considers the ills a child was likely to die from in 1911 and now in 2011, the lengths to which our culture goes to protect our children from an ever-shrinking list of dangers is positively demented.
    Stuff happens. You take what -reasonable- precautions you can, and then you go live your life and if something happens, it does. Then you deal with it.
    Given the utterly insane way people drive anymore, a bike helmet is a reasonable precaution. A full set of body armor and a tail gunner would be reasonable, IMHO. I’m wanting a 20mm turret on my truck some days.
    Team sports like soccer, baseball, and particularly football and hockey are DANGEROUS. Kids get seriously hurt and even killed every year doing that stuff. Skateboards, skiing, climbing, BMX, motorcycles, snowmobiles, all DANGEROUS. If you do it, you could get f-ed up bigtime.
    I’m a PT neuro specialist, I know what “f-ed up” looks like. I know a guy who fell down at work and woke up in the hospital a quadriplegic. Just tripped over himself, fell funny. Broke his neck, bang.
    But a curling helmet? Unless the kid is aphasic, that ain’t reasonable. Sorry, its just not. If a kid needs a helmet to curl then they need one to walk from the fridge to the supper table.

  22. I curled for over 30 years and helped teach junior curling for 8 years. No helmets, ever. Saw probably a hundred falls but never a head injury. The nanny state marches on.

  23. Curling lost me when they lost the ashtrays.
    Posted by: ∞² at December 14, 2011 12:37 AM
    Me too. I still like the outdoor events where tobacco smoke mingles with wood smoke and nobody makes other smokers and myself feel like filthy freaks who are only invited because we have money to help the curling outfit out. My days as a doormat are over.

  24. There’s just one small point that everyone seems to be missing.
    PARENTS HAVE TO BUY THESE DAM# BLASTED HELMETS!
    My granddaughter has 3 kids. Do you know what it costs to buy a bike helmet, a hockey helmet, and a God-knows what else helmet?
    So that kid is being active and smiling. Good for him.
    My grgrkids have to miss school outings that require helmets. So for all those happy smiling active kids, there are 100 more (at least) sitting at home.
    Also, I grew up in a town of under 5,000 in the days when kids were active, and none (ZERO) received a brain injury. I nearly did falling off a slide but I haven’t seen anyone demand they be removed from school yards. That will be next I’m sure.
    An aside: the town was on two rivers – two children drowned by accidentally falling into the water in my lifetime. Hundreds were on or in the water every day and most of those years were pre-lifejacket laws. Also, mummy and daddy, nor even an adult, weren’t hovering over them. They were FREE to be kids and learn responsibility. How the H do they learn anything nowadays?

  25. gellen said: “…two children drowned by accidentally falling into the water in my lifetime.”
    When I lived in Phoenix I’d hear about toddlers drowning in five gallon pails fairly regularly. Two or three times a year. See if you can guess the nationality and immigration status of the parents…
    Running the kids over with the family flivver was also popular. Kind of the antithesis of the modern helicopter parent, more like the helicopter gunship parenting style.

  26. I to have been on the ice helping kids learn and unlike peterj I have seen falls – thankfully all recovered. The first time you need need to call the paramedics for some 8 year old who has hit their head as they fell when sweeping or were watching another sheet as the rock took their feet out some of you may not be so brave.
    By the way – worst fall I ever saw – 9 AM on a Saturday at the Regina Men’s – some cowboy fell on the rock with his head after to many “orange juice” – it was hilarious after he returned with a “turban” on the wrap his cracked skull.
    Helmets on young kids learning the provincial sport is not a bad thing.

  27. My sister is a figure skating coach and about 10 years ago she fell on the ice and had a major concussion, so I don’t see a problem with a kid wearing a helmet.

  28. Can’t wait to see the figure skaters wearing helmets in the Olympics … and the divers … and the balloon and ribbon dancers … and the gymnasts … the folks at the opening and closing ceremonies … well everyone …

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