Wear that helmet

If it’s spring, and the weather is warming up kids on bikes are a given. It’s important to get the right bike for your child but perhaps even more importantly the right helmet.  Protecting their cranium from the concrete is high priority as they careen around the neighborhood. Over 300,000 head injuries occurred in 2004 from recreational biking and skateboarding.

Will any helmet do? Uh-uh. The Consumer Protection Safety Commission says first get a bike helmet for biking, a skateboard helmet for skateboarding, etc. This helmet is all that is between your child and the hard surface they crash into and can absorb a good part of the impact, leaving your child intact.

In fact, the New England Journal of Medicine says with the right helmet head injuries can go down by more than 80 per cent. It can increase your child’s protection from, more specifically, brain injury by almost 90 per cent.

So when it starts to get warm outside and your kids rev up their two wheelers, head for the store and make sure they have adequate head protection.