Tuesday, April 27, 2010

NEEDED: Marriage Ref!!

Fight: Stephanie, aka Mommy, wants our wee little one to grow up and be strong and healthy....without brain damage. Mommy wants her children to wear a helmet when riding a bike (and skateboarding, rollerblading, etc.). Simple, cheap, easy way of preventing a possible head injury or death by wearing one and definitely won't "interfere" with the bike riding fun. Some additional statistics:
  • Non-helmeted riders are 14 times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than helmeted riders
  • Helmets can prevent 75% of bicycle fatalities among children
  • 85-88% of critical head and brain injuries can be prevented through the use of a bicycle helmet
  • By wearing a helmet, an injury can be prevented every 4 minutes
  • A bicyclist died every six hours in the year 2002
  • In the year 2000, 90% of bicycle fatalities occurred to riders not wearing helmets

http://www.thinkfirst.org/teens/BicycleSafety.asp.

Adam, aka Daddy, doesn't feel that protecting our child against possible brain damage or death by wearing a helmet is something that he does not want our children to participate in. Wearing a helmet will make them "soft".

I'm sure almost everyone reading this never wore a helmet as a kid. But then again, how many people didn't wear seat belts in the car either. I can understand that I was being unreasonable if I was asking my kid to wear a helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, mouth guard, hearing protection, safety glasses and a harness to prevent the kid from falling altogether - but I'm not trying to prevent the kid from falling and scraping his knee...I'm trying to prevent a head injury.

So.....taking into account that I'm only growing a fig-size child at the moment....it might take about 6 years to settle this debate, so I figured I'd start thinking about it now. Oh...and the fact that we have had this argument for about 2 years already (before we were even planning to have kids). Your thoughts?? Helmet and safe kid?? No helmet and possible head injury??

2 comments:

Alisha said...

Considering there are approx 3647892 children that bike ride in the caul-de-sac in front of my house I can let you know that basically any child under the age of 10 is wearing a helmet. Boy or girl no matter. I remember needing to wear a helmet as a kid when I rode bikes. I was also victim to wearing knee pads, elbow pads, etc. when I was rollerblading.

I disagree. Wearing a helmet doesn't make a kid "soft." Sitting inside eating doughnuts and chips while watching TV and playing video games all day makes a kid "soft".

Let them go outside and play. And for the love of Pete, wear the helmet. Put flames on it if it makes you feel more manly. But still. Just do it.

Stef said...

So I mentioned this to Brandon today - you know, the guy that wants to buy our non-existant children DIRT BIKES at the age of 4 - about your convo w/Adam.....even he agreed, KIDS WEAR HELMETS! Sorry Adam....can't win all the time :)

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