Aibu to wonder whether most parents insist their children wear helmets when on bikes and scooters?

[Pl242]

I’m curious on views on this.

We have always insisted both our kids (5 and 2.5) wear helmets when on their bikes and scooters.

Our 5yo is in year 1 and has just started to cycle to school. The bike is stored at school and we have been taking the helmet home and bringing it back at pick up. Mostly just as we thought it might easily get lost.

We had noticed that a fair amount, in fact probably the majority of kids who we see on bikes and scooters around school, don’t wear helmets. This surprised us a bit but obviously none of our business as to what decisions other parents make.

However now our 5yo has told us that they’re allowed to cycle around the playground at playtime and also at the after school club she attends at least one afternoon a week. This isn’t a surprise but hadn’t crossed our minds really. She told us about it in the context of a new after school club friend in the year above her who she says doesn’t wear a helmet. This prompted us to tell her that our rule is that she always needs to wear a helmet when cycling and that we would start to leave the helmet with her and her bike at school. She accepted this but obviously we won’t be there to enforce that and she did seem a bit confused/upset as to why she has to and her friend doesn’t etc. We just reinforced our view again.

I don’t want to come off as precious. It’s not as if we’re hugely worried of the risk of her having a serious bike accident in the playground. It’s just that we want to be consistent on helmet wearing. And I know that I can and should direct any specific concerns about bike use at school to the school.

It’s just that this situation prompted me to wonder whether we’re in the minority here or not. Interested in views and if you want to vote I suppose the possible answers are:

YANBU- most parents insist on helmet wearing
YABU - most parents don’t see helmet wearing as important.

Yes to both here too but also appear to be in the minority

So it's not clear cut that you're better off wearing one, and it's a perfectly reasonable choice not to.

I despair. You’ve not only misread a study done on 1 cyclist, but you think that outweighs the Australian study on 65,000 cyclists concluding helmets reduce serious head injuries by 70% plus the cycle fatality study done on 119 cycle deaths which concluded that a helmet would have saved their life in 62.3% of the cases when a cyclist did not wear a helmet and sustained only a head injury (43 out of 69 cases).

@CiderWithRosiee
I cannot imagine your heartbreak. I am so very sorry for your loss

My DC don't have scooters but we all wear helmets on bikes. My oldest didn't learn to ride a bike until he was 10 because he refused to wear a helmet before that so he wasn't allowed a bike.
I would say about 1 in 10 children or families wear them around here and I despair. I live on a busy road and once saw a teenage boy fall off his bike and hit his head on the kerb. I believe he suffered life changing injuries.

YANBU

In our house, no helmet, no bike.

I think it must be a class thing.

On MN it's shocking that a child might ride without a helmet, but I live opposite a primary school with a very deprived catchment and very few children wear helmets to cycle to school. I've never seen a scooting child in a helmet.

DD has to wear a helmet on both her bike and scooter (age 7), she has enough issues without adding a serious head injury to the list.

She's pretty good at wearing it, but ASC aren't great at enforcing it, especially if other DC aren't wearing it, so I now don't let her take her bike or scooter to school on ASC days.

No helmet, no riding.

Our son doesn't wear a helmet at the moment.

Once he starts back on his bike by the road then yes, he will wear one, at the park or in our close, no I don't enforce it.

He doesn't wear one on his scooter either

Adults and children in this family wear helmets for bikes, scooters and ponies. Non negotiable. I accept that in the nursery/reception class years they rode school tricycles etc in the playground with no helmet but really that was pretty low risk and they understood perfectly well that home has different rules.

When my son was young he had a terrible accident on his scooter whilst we were in the park and stopped himself by hitting his head against the railings!! He was exceedingly lucky not to have any lasting damage (apart from a permanent small lump on his forehead) but ever since then I was adamant that all three of my children had to wear helmets when riding their bike or scooter. However it is exceedingly difficult to monitor what they are doing at school although how big is the playground that they are able to allow pupils to ride freely around it?!

To be fair, I wouldn't be too concerned about cycling in a playground. It's the open road with cars and other vehicles that worry me.

We all wear helmets in our house.
Drives me nuts to see anyone on a bike without a helmet. I spent a night in a&e with my younger sister after she fell off her bike outside our house and hit her head. It was just concussion in the end but the eye rolling and sleepiness was terrifying. She wasn't going very fast either, just an awkward fall.

My 7 year old is too much of a whimp not to anyway she wears full wrist, elbow and knee pads with a helmet on her bike….

Wheels=helmet.
Scooters can be massively dangerous. You go straight over the handlebars if you hit a bump or crack.

Mine are 2.5 and 5 and we absolutely insist. We have been consistent and so they never question it anymore. However now With school starting I’m sure it’ll be harder. I see kids flying around on scooters and bikes with no helmets and it gives me shudders

I was always told I had to wear my helmet if I was on my bike if not no bike. Also there was a student of a teacher across the road that didn't wear one had an accident and ended up with brain damage.

It's always stuck with me and my little boy gets told the same thing if you're on your bike you have to wear a helmet. I have no issue with taking his bike off him when he's older if I catch him without one.

I hate how many young kids I see on bikes near roads without helmets on!

Always on a bike even in a park. Both kids can get up to quite a speed on their bikes and could easily be hurt quite badly if they come off. I don't worry so much with the older one on a scooter but the younger one has a three wheeler still and they are terrible for tipping forward so I do make him wear a helmet.

DDs 4. On bikes then yes she has to wear a helmet. Her scooter she is ridiculously slow at using, she can walk faster than scoot so she doesn’t have to. If she was quicker then she would have to. DD2 will be getting her first balance bike for Christmas at 20 months, she will have a helmet as well.

Bikes yes. My son's bike helmet I lock up with his bike at school slipping the lock through the straps. When the school gets the balance bikes out they don't make them wear helmets BUT when the bikeability guy used to (older daughters were there some years back) he insisted on helmets all the time. The secondary school further up the road technically insist on it. But it is mainly ignored by students claiming it's too much kit to cart around.

My daughter and I wear helmets on my bike (+child seat) and she wears on her bike. My view is that the helmet protects you falling off - if a HGV decides to take us out on the bike the helmet isnt going to do much but that’s a small risk, the much bigger risk is falling off the bike in a skid or similar and for that a helmet works!

Our DD is 3 and we've always insisted on a helmet if she's on her balance bike or scooter. To begin with when it was all new she didn't want to wear the helmet, so we had a few tantrums when we wouldn't let her use them, til she got the message. However most of the other kids we see in parks on theirs don't wear helmets and she often asks why, I'm never sure what to tell her really.

Always on a bike. My dc have never been into scooters but I would've insisted. I've worked with children with brain injuries and met several caused by falling off/ going over the handle bars of scooter.

Just realised I didn't say he's five. Still learning on the road where I cycle in the position just behind to his right and then he cycles at suitable parks. Never on the pavement because 1. Pedestrians and 2. Usually awful surface and more likely to hit a bump.

Bike yes, scooter no. Not sure why we don't insist on helmets for scooters, we just never have. We do if they're at the skate park on their scooter but not just scooting to school.

Same rule here- no helmet, no bike. I want it to just be an automatic thing that the two go together.

Anything with wheels - a bike scooter or skates. I have taken the scooter away before now for taking the helmet off.