I really didn’t like to play on my best friend Paula’s trampoline when we were growing up. It seemed to me entirely too easy to misstep and land with one leg between a spring and the rubber, or to misbounce and land with your tailbone on the metal frame. Or to bounce into the neighbor’s yard.
No one was spotting us; it was the 70′s, after all.
Now decades later, the American Academy of Pediatrics has caught up with the common sense of a 10-year-old, advising against “recreational trampoline use.”
Listen up neighbors with trampolines: your bouncy, flouncy, fun, fun, fun contraptions have been declared dangerous in the October 2012 Pediatrics. Though originally designed as a “tumbling device” in 1945 as a training tool for gymnasts and later for use in military aviator training, says Pediatrics, home use has been on the rise.
So, too, have trampoline-related injuries. Oh, wait, no. They’re on the decline. The Pediatrics study found that the rate of trampoline-related injury declined from 38.1 per 100,000 in 2004 to 31.9 per 100,000 in 2009. But those accidents and injuries can be doozies:
- Head and neck injuries: 10-17%
- Impact with frame: 20%
- Falls: 27-39%
- Lower extremity injuries: 34%-50%
- Multiple people using trampoline at once (affecting mainly the smallest person on the trampoline): 75%
There were no results on what happens when four eighth graders get on a trampoline and pelt each other with various shaped sports balls, but my son and his friends have performed such a periodic study at his friend’s trampoline.
The AAP, therefore, concluded that trampolines are dangerous. They said that enclosures, padding and adult supervision really don’t help much, providing instead a “false sense of security.” Because really, what are you going to do when your 90-pound kid is being propelled, tailbone first, toward the edge of the trampoline? Catch her?
Meanwhile, the AAP is urging its pediatrician members to discourage home use of trampolines. I’m going to do the same, starting right here in my neighborhood.
Do you have a trampoline? Doesn’t it make you nervous?
We do not have a trampoline. I toyed with getting one a few years ago and happened to post it on Facebook and got about 25 responses saying “Don’t do it! Trampolines are dangerous!” For the mom of very active boys, it seemed like a great idea at the time…on second thought, three boys on a trampoline? What a bad idea!
We have a trampoline and we have very strict rules about the stunts you can do and the number of kids at a time (2). Our house is the happening place in the neighborhood because of it, and we’ve only had one injury worth mentioning, and it was only a strained muscle. In fact, it’s the one thing that gets the kids outside, and often while waiting for a turn, they end up finding other ways to entertain themselves that require more imagination. I’d also note before we got ours, my kids were jumping on friends’ trampolines injury free for the last 3+ years.
Meanwhile, bikes and scooters and soccer games have caused regular injuries. Ironically nothing yet from climbing trees (knock on wood). Active life is dangerous, but I’d rather live it and teach my kids how to be active responsibly.