Keep Your Child Safe During Extreme Sports

Jumping into lakes, rolling down hills, building and riding on bike ramps and climbing tress have been popular childhood pastimes for many years. Today, these activities are referred to as extreme sports, and although you may ask you child to stop partaking in them, you may not always receive a favorable response. The best thing you can do is provide your child with all the proper safety equipment needed and be sure that they wear it each and every time.

There are many broken bones that can be avoided each year from accidents on skateboards and bikes. There are many serious head injuries and even fatalities from improper helmet use or just not wearing helmets. Now I know one of the arguments is that when we were kids, nobody wore protective equipment or helmets and most of us survived. Maybe we were just lucky, I’m sure everybody knows somebody that got hurt badly enough by falling off their bike that a trip to the emergency room was required, maybe even worse.

I am a victim to a bike accident that could have been avoided by the proper safety gear and my friend was rushed to the emergency room, as a child with a head injury, due to the same reason. There was also a boy, that attended my school who was hit by a car while riding his bike, and died from head injury. I am not saying that he would not have died if he had a helmet on, but what I am saying is we will never know and it is better to play it safe then to risk your child’s life. It really is not a difficult task to make sure that your children are wearing the right gear for the right activities.

If they are playing football, you’d make them wear a helmet and pads, if they are playing baseball you would make them wear a cup and cleats, so why would riding a bike or skateboard be any different. At the minimum, they should always wear a helmet, arms and legs can usually be fixed, but heads are hard to replace. Along with the proper helmet, most helmets can be used for rollerblading, skateboarding and bike riding, they are made sport interchangeable.

You want to carefully check the specification when you are choosing a helmet for your child. Some helmets are made specifically for a certain sport, so if your child will be competing you will want to make sure that is the one you purchase. Besides the helmet, knee pads, wrist guards and elbow pads are also good ideas. For skating or biking on ramps hip and back pads should also be purchased.