The Most Common Children’s Sports Injuries and What to Do About Them

It’s that time of year again. Kids are back to school, and with that come minor injuries from all the great sports they’re so excited about playing. Sports injuries are an important aspect of family health, and it’s crucial to know where you can get quick help for children’s injuries. Urgent healthcare is a great place to go, and here are some of the most common minor injuries to be looking out for when the school year starts:

Injuries to the Head and Face

These are most common when kids are playing contact sports. While football has gotten a bad rap lately for concussion issues, the truth is that concussion is a concern with any type of contact sport. The very nature of these sports makes it impossible to avoid concussions entirely, and this has to be an accepted risk for parents weighing the pros and cons of sports for their children.

Boy’s football sees the highest concussion rate, but, perhaps surprisingly, girls’ soccer causes the second-most concussions. Coming in at third place in likelihood to cause concussions is girls’ basketball. In fact, 27% of all injuries from school sports will be to the head and face.

Ankle Issues

The second-most common sports injury is a twisted, sprained, or even broken ankle. These account for nearly 18% of all minor injuries at school or with kids’ sports. It’s important to get an ankle injury seen to as soon as possible to make sure that a sprain isn’t actually a break.

Knees

Coming in a close third to ankle injuries are injuries to the knees. These account for 13.4% of all children’s sports injuries. Knee issues can have a lifetime of effects if not seen to properly. The knee itself may have issues later in life, and walking with even a minor limp due to a knee injury can cause serious hip and joint issues by middle age. Don’t neglect minor injuries to the knee. Get them seen to by a walk in clinic or pediatric urgent care as soon as possible.

Hands and Wrists

The hands and wrists contain a multitude of small bones. In some ways, our hands and wrists are actually quite fragile. Your child’s hands and wrists will be crucial to their future life and work, so getting injuries attended to quickly is crucial to protecting your children and their future. Hand and wrist injuries make up nearly 8% of minor injuries in children’s sports.

Games Vs. Practice

We typically worry about game injuries more than practice injuries. While it’s true that there are more concussions and serious bruises during games than during practice, there are just as many fractures. This means it’s always important to know where to go and who to see for minor injuries, even on a normal practice evening.

Avoiding Injury

Although there is no way to guarantee that your child will never suffer an injury playing sports, there are some things you can do to make it less likely.

• Make sure your child stays in shape. Make sure they get a sports physical and help them keep active even during the offseason. The stronger and more flexible a child is, the less likely they are to suffer an injury. Staying in shape also means eating well, so don’t let your child tank up on sugar, refined grains, and processed foods all the time.
• Don’t neglect practice.Practice isn’t just there to instill discipline or teach team togetherness. It’s also there to help kids develop their playing skills. The more skill a child has, the less likely they are to be injured. It doesn’t hurt to look into summer camps that can also teach skills in the sport your child loves to play.
• Teach them emotional management skillsOne completely avoidable reason for injuries is anger or other strong emotion. Children who don’t know how to manage their emotions are likely to play too hard or too aggressively, greatly increasing their risk of injury. Parents are the ones best suited to teaching their children helpful strategies for dealing with emotions. Such emotions are inevitable in life, and the sooner kids learn what to do with them, the better.

Minor injuries happen in kids’ sports. The key is being prepared in advance.