Paul Wright | Do we really care about our children?

“Children are the future”, “Children are our priority”, “We love our children”. Those quotes come to mind as I reflect on the response to The Wright View published last week.

The article highlighted the growing body of medical evidence that shows that heading a football is associated with an increase in dementia-type symptoms in later life. The evidence is so persuasive that the United States of America (USA) has banned heading a football in games organised for children under the age of 10 years. Football executives, men in suits, have recognised and took action to prevent the possibility of a medical catastrophe in their children later on in life. This same group of men are looking at, and reviewing the medical evidence regarding similar neurological changes that have been shown to take place in the human brain after repeated sub-concussive forces associated with heading a football in women’s soccer.

However, here at home, where “children are the future”, absolutely nothing is being done to even find out if our children are at risk for neurological brain damage after years of heading a football during practice and games.

So, respected sports journalists and callers to talk shows ridicule the call for a ban on heading a football as “wanting headless football” to, as expected, much laughter and ridicule. As with sudden cardiac death associated with children at play, the only time action is taken is after a death. Not just any death. Compare the reaction of the death of a ‘promising’ youngster who goes to a brand-name institution to the death of other children who collapse at play, yet are not on the ‘radar’ of the sport press.

Today, how many schools and organisers of youth football games insist that children participating in organised sports undergo a pre-participation evaluation that includes an ECG and other tests that may indicate that a child has medical issues that need further evaluation before a return-to-play decision is made. Yet, ‘we love our children’.

What sort of policy would drive an adult to believe that having children in school play four competitive football games in eight days in order to finish the season before the December holidays, irrespective of the effect this punishing schedule has on the medical and psychological bodies of children in their care?

School is supposed to be where parents send their children for an education that prepares them for life. School is where children go to be exposed to sports, music, and theatre.

SOMETHING IS WRONG

Organised sports such as Champs and Manning Cup, daCosta Cup, and the Grace Shield are competitions where our children learn to respect rules, opponents, and the joys of victory and the inevitability of defeat. When sports becomes the reason for attending school, something is desperately wrong, and those that perpetuate this mantra for athletically gifted children must recognise that only one per cent of these so-called gifted children actually make a comfortable living out of their sporting prowess after school. The number of ‘talented’ children who are scouted by overseas colleges and universities, but who are left behind when their scholastic ability is determined, is mind-boggling. Those numbers are huge.

So, once again, this plea is for those tasked with the welfare of our children, the police, the Ministry of Education, the ministries of Youth and Sports, and the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association, the group of secondary-school principals who literally have the future of children in their care for at least five years, to act responsibly. Think before making decisions that increase the economic well-being of yourself or your institution but permanently damage the health and well-being of the children in your care. It can be done, it must be done. The future of this nation is at stake.