Kids Injuries and Resilience: Perspective From the Road
I spent the last week reading the book “The Boys in the Boat” by Daniel James Brown. It is a fascinating account of a group of nine rowers from Seattle who won the 1936 Berlin Olympic and destroyed Hitler’s dreams of showing the Aryan race as superior.
The nine men were not rich or educated like most rowers. In fact, they were lumberjacks, farmers, and fisherman. Their lives were so difficult and tragic that if they were alive today we would expect them to be depressed and traumatized. But instead, this group led energetic and incredible lives and accomplished much despite the obstacles they faced.
Relevance to New York…
If I have read the book while home in New York City, I would have thought the group was of “the greatest generation” and far removed from our experiences today. But I read the book while in Colorado at the USASA Snowboarding Nationals where my son was competing. And what I felt was…hope. The children at the competition were so much more than a news story winners, records broken and speed of competition.
If you have seen the interviews of Jonathan Haidt about his new book “The Anxious Generation,” you know that kids are not playing outside, nor even breaking bones anymore. Well we had a fair share of injuries and broken bones here at USASA! I have taken my boys to ER several times and I know how distressing it is — every time I drop them off for practice at the mountain I say “no injuries please.”
Children Lack Freedom to Try
Apparently we have now protected our kids so much that we should be more afraid of them not having any injuries. At our team text group, we talked about the injuries and I wrote “I think with so many kids testing their limits, we will see some injuries. It’s inevitable and a natural risk of the sport. I am glad that our kids are outside and pushing themselves and learning to get back up.” I was mostly preaching to myself: if you want your kids to practice the sport at their best and give it all, the risk of injuries is unavoidable.
Not only the kids here spend the entire day snowboarding (with teams meeting at 7:30am) but then they go to Woodward and jump on trampolines and skateboard until 8pm. By the end of the day, my son was so tired I had to drag him to the shower before he would collapse in bed. It was one week of physically exhausting days but so fulfilling. The snowboard community is super competitive and supportive at the same time - I heard my son’s friends saying “I will try the pipe when my friend is here.”
I must confess that I never wanted my son to join the snowboard team. When my husband told me about this option I said “Does that mean we need to drive them to the mountain every weekend at 8am for 6 months??? No thank you.” I am not a skier and I usually stay in the cafeteria reading books. By the end of the season, all I want is to sleep one weekend past 6:30 a.m…
But seeing the results of all this effort this week made it so worthy it. And then reading the story of Joe Rantz and all that happened in his life (like being abandoned by his family at ages 5, 10 and 15) and all the energy he still had to live, I just could think how lucky we are and how our kids will be fine even with, maybe, some broken bones.
