My sons played flag football in 4th & 5th. They moved to tackle football in jr high. My older son DID get a concussion playing football, but not organized football. He was in 9th grade, and was with a group of friends playing "touch" football in a backyard. Someone "touched" a little too hard and he went down backwards, clunked the back of his head on the ground. He was walking & talking fine, but then they realized he was a little confused about the preceding 10 minutes. They brought him home, and I took him straight up to the emergency room. To this day he doesn't remember his friend tackling him.
He continued to play football until he graduated from high school. He had two more mild concussions in his jr & sr years of high school, both due to wrestling. With one, he passed all the tests and went back for his next match. With the second , he wanted to finish the tournament but I agreed with the trainer that he was done for the day.
Sports can be dangerous, yes. Walking across the street or spending too much time in the sun can be dangerous. Football is getting better all the time at protective gear, and changing or adding rules to keep players from injuring themselves or others. I subscribe to the mindset of letting your children try things, but staying involved in their activities so that you can monitor their relative safety. 00 Clone put it well when he described it as being the bumper pads for your kids to bounce off. Kids are going to eat dirt, get black eyes, bloody noses & bruised shins...they might even break a bone or two along the way to adulthood. All of that will happen just as easily without football as with football.
He continued to play football until he graduated from high school. He had two more mild concussions in his jr & sr years of high school, both due to wrestling. With one, he passed all the tests and went back for his next match. With the second , he wanted to finish the tournament but I agreed with the trainer that he was done for the day.
Sports can be dangerous, yes. Walking across the street or spending too much time in the sun can be dangerous. Football is getting better all the time at protective gear, and changing or adding rules to keep players from injuring themselves or others. I subscribe to the mindset of letting your children try things, but staying involved in their activities so that you can monitor their relative safety. 00 Clone put it well when he described it as being the bumper pads for your kids to bounce off. Kids are going to eat dirt, get black eyes, bloody noses & bruised shins...they might even break a bone or two along the way to adulthood. All of that will happen just as easily without football as with football.