# Will you let your kid play football?

Sparked by a somewhat vitriolic discussion on a dadgroup I'm in. Would you let your kid play football, if so what restrictions? If not, what other sports are allowed, and with what restrictions?

https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/144/5/e20192180/38225/Concussion-Incidence-and-Trends-in-20-High-School?fbclid=IwAR0EFuaf5EsV5OafmtAAXq3zRGI32dlWadaBM7U18SatYh6txO2v6oaJu-s?autologincheck=redirected?nfToken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2140075/?fbclid=IwAR18lhXJN3IjhzNwwdd-qfo3g9RBMUtYIDniLxSuH25yFxWZLVGGK_dyLVY

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5384815/?fbclid=IwAR1tPWAGlN0NSupBRQMFokLAqlThBt5b0jEE-A_YEem3lWcWm3eKCBIqWXc

https://concussionfoundation.org/news/press-release/breakthrough-study-reveals-repetitive-head-impacts-definitive-cause-CTE

The "dadgroup consensus" seemed to be that football was right out, but that all other mainstream HS sports were fine. My read of the above links is that football is the cause of the week, but that playing MS/HS football is not actually outrageously more dangerous than other mainstream HS sports. A surprisingly high # of people seemed to attack the idea of HS sport as valuable at all, and that kids should only play non-contact sports or no sports b/c the risk is too great.

Sports (specifically) and competitive activities (more generally) are a great way to teach instant and lasting life lessons. How to deal with defeat, the value of hard work, getting along/working with people you like (and those you don't), being a gracious winner, how good it feels to win, building confidence through growing competence and many more. Essentially, sports are life writ small and allow kids to experience previews and learn from those previews in a lower cost environment. Certainly other competitive activities provide many of these lessons (in a saner world people would include progression raiding experience from MMOs on their resumes), but MS/HS sports provide them + the physical activity that growing bodies thrive on. Additionally, many benefits to regular physical activity are well established (and, with the difficulty of becoming physically active later in life, starting young seems a good idea). (To be completely honest, I find the benefits of sports so obvious that the need to include this gasts my flabbers, but given the previous discussion I felt compelled to).

The risk profile seems to be something like: Football, closeish behind other physical sports (soccer most notably), a decent gap, sports with accidental head contact, a decent gap, non-contact sports without much accidental head contact. As it stands football seems more dangerous, but not necessarily wildly more dangerous from a brain injury perspective. If it's only marginally more dangerous then the answer might be to place specific restrictions (stop playing after 1 or 2 concussions, starting in 8th grade vs 6th grade, not playing Pop Warner (starting as low as age 5), limiting position choices to "safer" positions).

Emerging research (shown here by the press release) questions if concussions are the issue, or is it concussions + repeatedly banging your head around, that causes the long term problems? If football is already the highest(ish) risk mainstream sport in terms of brain injury, and we're undercounting the risk because of an undue focus on concussions, then if you account for that risk does it become a category of its own and wildly more dangerous than the other activities?

That's the abstract discussion. The specific question is this: Will you let your kids play football? What restrictions will you place on their participation? If not, can you kid play soccer (specifically Girl's soccer which is (on brain injury) measures potentially as dangerous as football)? Contact sports? Boxing? MMA? Non-Boxing/MMA martial arts? Only non-contact sports? No sports? What do you need to change your mind on this?

Personally, I think I'd let my kids play MS/HS, but probably not Pop Warner and I'd make it clear that they're done for at least a year after 1 concussion. The risks don't seem wildly out of range of the other sports, and while I hope my kids opt into different sports (cough cough fencing), I think the life lessons are too important to pass on. A kid denied their primary sport doesn't necessarily choose a different sport, but might pass on sports altogether. That said, it will of course depend on the kid and if it's their clear preference or a choice among many sports.