Please Wear Your Helmet!

Every day I tell kids they should wear helmets. They should wear bike helmets whenever they are on something with wheels (bikes, skateboards, scooters, rip-sticks, roller-blades...) or ski helmets if skiing or snowboarding. They should wear the appropriate helmet for a motorized dirt bike or for off-road vehicles, as well.

Every day I have small children tell me they don't need a helmet because they never fall. Then I realize I have to convince both child and parent (mostly parents in this age group of kids) that the point of a helmet is to protect in case of an accident. I don't doubt the child's skill on the bike, or the quiet cul-de-sac the family lives on. I say that a helmet is like a seatbelt in the car. You always wear your seat belt in the car, right? But do you really think your Mom or Dad will get in a crash? No! So why wear the seatbelt? Just in case of an accident, in case something happens that we didn't know would happen. Helmets are the same kind of thing. They protect you in case of an accident, and we wear them because we don't know when accidents will happen.

I also tell kids (getting to a little older group now) something Dr. Van Es told one of my girls during her check up with him. I loved this explanation, and now I use it all the time. Doctors are good at fixing broken arms and legs, we just put them in a cast and a few weeks later everything is as good as new. Also, we can put band-aids on scrapes, and sew up cuts with stitches. But doctors are not good at fixing brains. If your head cracks open and you hurt your brain, there isn't much that we can do other than wait and see what kind of damage was done (and I add my own spin on it here, especially for adolescents). For example, a bad brain injury can take away your ability to talk, you might not be able to walk and have to use a wheelchair, you might not be able to control yourself to get to the bathroom and therefore need to wear a diaper, you might not be smart anymore...etc. So the helmet is extra important when you are on your wheels because it gives your brain an extra hard layer of protection in case of an accident.

And after feeling really good about how I have educated everyone I drive home for lunch in the summer and see lots of kids (many are my patients) in my neighborhood biking, skateboarding, rip-sticking, and scootering around with NO HELMETS. And they are in the street!

But street versus sidewalk is worth mentioning when it comes to helmets. The worst head injury from a device in this category of someone in my pediatric practice was a six year old girl who lived across from the elementary school and was a friend of my oldest daughter. She was on her little scooter on the sidewalk in front of her house, unhelmeted. Mom was gardening in the yard, right there to supervise. She hit a little crack or rock, fell off the scooter and hit her head hard on the pavement. Forty-five minutes later she was vomiting and very drowsy and lethargic, and within another hour or two was in the operating room having the bleed into her brain drained by a neurosurgeon. She is ok, but fortunate to have such a good outcome. Probably this was preventable if she had been wearing a bike helmet.

It is not enough to just tell kids to wear their helmets. They don't believe they need helmets because they don't think they will fall. As parents it is our responsibility to make our kids wear their helmets, with consequences if they do not wear them. We need to get all the parents in the neighborhood in on this rule, so one child doesn't have to feel the stigma of being the only one who has to wear a helmet. And we as parents have to set a good example! We need to wear helmets, too. It's a little funny to see families riding around town with three helmeted kids on bikes, but the parents on bikes have bare heads. How long do you think those kids will be wanting to wear helmets?

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