Sports Medicine for Parents of Youth Athletes
How to Prevent and Treat Sports Injuries in Young Athletes
Introduction
This book is meant to be a guide for parents of youth athletes who need to find out how to deal with sports injuries to their children. There are over 10 million youth athletes playing organized sports in America alone. That means that everyday youth athletes are getting hurt playing sports.
If you are a parent, it is likely that your child will sustain an injury playing an organized, community sport. Four million children under the age of 15 are hurt every year, some playing on the playground and some on sports teams from Little League baseball to intramural school events (Pappas, "Children and Sports", Sports Health: The complete book of athletic injuries, 1981).
Some parents know what to do when this happens, but many do not. The sight of their child going down on the field, ice, court, or pitch is often a jolt and causes a rush of emotions in the parent. This environment does not make for the best use of judgment when it comes to treating the injury. In this handbook you will find practical advice on how to proceed when an injury occurs to your child. It will also show how to evaluate the options available to you as the parent. This information has been gathered from some of modern sports medicines most notable figures. They have spent a lifetime treating patients and getting athletes back in shape to play again. Using their knowledge you as the parent of a youth athlete can effectively help to treat the injury suffered by your child, and follow a proper course of action in healing and repairing the damage caused by the injury. The ability of your child to return to action and gain the valuable experiences that sports participation brings them as soon as possible is the ultimate goal of this guide.
Some injuries will be minor and require no serious medical attention but there are still important things you can do that will make recovery quicker and easier. Some injuries are more severe and will require some calm and collected methodology to recovery. It is our hope that we can make that path smoother, calmer, and most importantly, more effective.
Tom Abdenour, athletic trainer for the Golden State Warriors basketball team on kids and sports,” I think it is real important that parents let their kids be kids and let them enjoy their exposure and the opportunities that they have. If the sports are to be used as a social outlet so that they might meet other kids, if the sports are to be used as a fitness outlet so they can run around and burn off calories, and get in shape, those are all very wonderful. I think it is also important that parents can't forget that if there are any inherent medical conditions such as asthma that they make sure they look out for the child with regard to that. They be conscientious of and cognizant of hot weather situations, make sure they take water. Or cold weather situations make sure they have dry clothes they can get into after the game in the rain. And most importantly they need to be very very supportive of their kids, especially the younger ones because there are very few nine or ten year olds are going to end up in the hall of fame, so just them be kids and enjoy.”