I have just fallen out with my eleven year old son. I don't often fall out with him, but the one thing I always fall out with him about is his skateboard helmet.
As soon as he started to enjoy skateboarding and scootering, I felt nervous. He was watching videos on youtube for hours and then would go out and try to copy the tricks he had seen on the screen.
Right from the start , I bought him a helmet and made him wear it - much to his disgust.
"It wasn't cool"
"But I've done my hair"
"It's too hot"
Often he would sneak out and do a few tricks without it on, until I spotted him through the window and made him come back in and put it on.
Since he started enjoying this hobby, we have gone further afield than our front drive and have visited different skateparks and BMX tracks.
I am always shocked to see how many boys and girls are riding on these parks without a safety helmet.
Perhaps some of them are allowed to go there on their own and of course they may leave the house with the helmet then take it off as soon as they are around the corner.
But sometimes, parents are sitting watching and encouraging the great tricks and stunts that they do and applauding them - without acknowledging the danger they are in by not wearing a helmet.
I feel like going up to them, shaking them and asking them what they are doing? Why are they acting so irresponsibly.
Do they have any idea what could happen to their child?
Recently, I sat Joe down and showed him a video that I had found on youtube. Not one of skating tricks - but a video of a campaign to make children wear helmets when riding bikes and scooters and the like.
Entitled "Road Safety Commercial - Wear a Helmet - there is no Excuse" the opening scene is a girl in hospital combing her hair and it shows a very nasty scar underneath.
The subtitles then read "it made a mess of my hair"
The second scene is more disturbing - a young boy lying on a stretcher in a head brace with the caption
"Because it doesn't look good"
Then another boy being fed by a nurse, confined to a wheelchair and with head injuries so bad, he is like a small baby.
This caption says
"It will never happen to me"
At the end it says 23,000 permanently injured and 12,000 deaths. I don't know which country these statistics refer to or over what period of time.
I don't care either.
If you let your child ride a bike, skateboard or scooter without a helmet then you are risking your child be one of those statistics for this country.
Please don't let the next video on youtube include footage of your child.
Let's make Helmets Cool now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt8z7s5lW00