Dangers of sledding/tubing
 

Check out this story:

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/212142/

Poor guy has nine kids and no health insurance and now he is paralyzed due to a sledding accident.

A very good friend of ours (19 years old) had a tubing accident right before Christmas and now she is a quadripilegic. It has been heartbreaking for us to watch. She had such a great life ahead of her.

Bottom line: We are going to be nazis now about sledding and tubing for our kids. The risks are too great. We will only allow it in rare, highly-supervised environments like Soldier Hollow.

Wow, that is sad and scary.

On a side note, not having health insurance is a huge gamble, one I have never been willing to take.

I always dreaded when we had to go tubing. I was a highly risk averse kid, and the thing I remember most was the frequent jarring pain of sledding or tubing.

when I was little I sledded (or is it just sled?) into a picnic table, and the edge of the bench caught my abdomen. I had a good gash.

I've only been skiing once, and won't do it again without a helmet.

I once saw a kid break both of his legs while tobaggoning (is that a word?). It was an old fashioned toboggan, made of wood and curved up and back on the front end, sort of like a a reclining letter "J". He had both of his legs extended so his feet and part of his lower legs were under the curve. He went flying down a hill and ran into a pole (incredibly this was at a sledding resort in Canada) and the tobaggon came to an abrupt stop. So abrupt that he flew up and forward but his feet and legs couldn't come out and he broke both of his legs. He screamed the scream of the damned. It still hurts just remembering the sound, even without the visual, which was also pretty bad.

I ski without a helmet but would never ride a bike without one. Odd the risks we can live with, eh? I also would go sledding but I hate trampolines, which seem like broken bone machines to me.

A slight digression: at our ward YC this past weekend a man I know spoke of his experience of having half his face blown off in a hunting accident. It happened when he was 12. His cousin shot him at nearly point-blank range in the side of the head with a shotgun.

He wanted to impress on the kids the importance of managing risks in their lives. Not to be scared, but to be calculating in the risks they take. It’s a tough sell to 15-17 year old boys, which he acknowledged.

The most powerful part of his discussion was on how he learned to know and like who he is on the ‘inside’. He gain much of his insight during and after months of blindness and being strapped down while they rebuilt hit face. Influential stuff.

I love sledding, tubing, skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, and ice skating. I've been doing all of them since elementary school.

That's not to say there haven't been pitfalls. In 5th grade I got a spiral fracture on my right leg from tubing at a ward activity. In Jr. High I broke my 3 fingers while skiing. In High School I broke my collarbone and more fingers snowboarding. I've also had numerous sprains, torn ligaments, and other bumps and bruises along the way.

I still love the winter sports, especially the free ones like tubing. There will certainly be broken bones along the way, but it's part of growing up and enjoying the seasons and environment.

I love winter sports too and have seen my share of accidents. I had a friend who was paralyzed in a sledding accident.

I went snowboarding today and it was the 15th time this season and except for a mild AC sprain my first time out it's been a relatively clean season for me. Three seasons ago I had a third degree AC sprain which took me about 2 months to recover from. That same season my business partner broke his back when he didn't carry enough speed off a ledge and landed on a flat spot.

My goal this year was to get in 20 trips so I think I'll just make it. Though I am starting to jones for the summer.

A woman (Bishop's wife) was paralyzed at the ward sledding activity when I was growing up. Very sad stuff. I too am not a fan of my kids going sledding. Rule #1 is no headfirst sledding.

The problem with tubing/sledding is the lack of control. With everything else you listed it is easier to stop or turn when you need to.