Best of the Web: Urgent action needed on the concussion risks for kids in sport, and more

(Annette Greenhow, The Conversation)

There’s been some long overdue focus lately on the debilitating effects of concussion on elite sports people, particularly AFL players. The implications of concussion injuries sustained on the sporting field can have long-term and sometimes tragic consequences.

But what about junior sport? What protections are in place?

Should I be signing up my child for the footy team?

It was this exact question the author of the article, an academic, asked themselves back in 2010. This is when they began researching the dangers of concussion in professional sport. They found there was no real understanding of who was responsible for making the system safe.

A decade on, there is a long way to go, and there’s a need for an effective concussion strategy to keep our kids safe.

(Rachael Dexter, The Age)

Victoria’s hard lockdowns had experts warning of an associated increase in family violence. This report highlights one aspect of this: child-to-parent violence.

Crime data from Victoria Police shows an increase of 20 per cent in  child-to-parent violence between October 2019 and September 2020. About two-thirds of the perpetrators were boys, and mothers were the victims in about 70 per cent of cases.

An academic looking at the effects of COVID-19 on adolescent violence in the home said the behaviour was not just ‘teenagers being teenagers’.

‘It’s definitely recognised as a pattern of behaviour, like other forms of family violence. It’s understood as having an aim to try and control a situation or get a certain outcome.’

(Nama Winston, ABC Everyday)

As a child, the author was raised on horror movies and books. When she was aged eight, she sat on her Dad’s lap watching Psycho, the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock psychological horror film.

She loved the movie, but exposure to the horror film genre made her scared of the dark.

Now a 44-year-old mum, she still loves horror movies – and is still afraid of the dark. She’s passed on this fear to her son, who can’t enjoy a school camp or sleep over without a lamp on in the room.

The author knows she has to help him – but how?

Enter a family GP and a clinical psychologist, who discuss the issue and offer some suggestions of what can be done to calm the fear of the dark.