Time for "That Talk" With The Kids. WSR #5

It's the Doak TC Weekly Safety Reminder (WSR) #5

It is indeed time for that springtime talk with your kids. The one that is so hard to have because, first of all, you know they don't believe you, and, second of all, you may not believe it yourself. Yes I'm talking about convincing your kids that they need to wear a helmet when they're biking, blading, scootering or doing myriad other fast and fun activities.

I know you already tried doing this with limited success at the beginning of the winter. You warned them about the high density normally found in trees and rocks. You also tried pointing to the Olympics saying "SEE, even the best boarders in the world wear a helmet." But, it didn't seem to make much of an impression.

First of all, like with wearing seatbelts and stopping at stop signs, if you don't wear a helmet when you're doing these things then your argument won't carry much (any) authority. Perhaps you need to convince yourself along with your kids. Try this simple exercise:

Take a bike helmet (you know you have one somewhere) or a plastic mixing bowl, go out to the driveway, hold the helmet at the same level as your kid's head, invert it and drop it on the pavement. Hear that sharp, quick smacking sound? Now, that's just at the level of your kid's head standing still. Try this again up a couple of feet higher where they would be on a bike. Try it at a slow walk. Then, for added fun, strap a melon into it and drop it. Then take the melon out and drop it from the same height. Yes, second grade boys just want to see the melon get squished, but I've seen the look on the faces of many people when I've done these demonstrations. Many people go silent.

Repeat this phase to yourself and then aloud to your kids- "our brains are really squishy and easy to injure, and once injured they stay injured for a very long time; perhaps forever." You see, when that mixing bowl that we call a skull hits something, that squishy brain smacks in to the inside of that bowl. The bowl may look OK from the outside, but that bruised brain may not be. That helmet that you dropped on the ground is meant to absorb the force of the blow instead of the skull.

OK, get your helmet, a melon and a kid and try that talk again. I think you'll do better this time.