Even the hardheaded need ski helmets

Let’s face it: There are lots of battles vacationing parents won’t win, and we don’t want to spend precious time together arguing with the kids. But when their safety is the issue, we can’t give in.

Take the fight that starts in my house every year around this time and continues all winter. I urge 18-year-old Matt, an expert skier, to wear a ski helmet. He refuses, insisting he doesn’t need one.

I wasn’t ready to draw the proverbial line in the snow until I talked to Denver neurosurgeon Stewart Levy. Now I am. Matt: No helmet, no lift ticket.

“The bottom line is that helmets can reduce the risk of brain injury as much as 75%,” says Levy, who has researched the subject for the last seven years. “If you get a brain injury with a helmet, it won’t be as severe.”

Levy’s findings prompted him to start It Ain’t Brain Surgery, a program at the two St. Anthony hospitals in Denver that makes helmets available to skiers and boarders when they rent skis across Colorado.

Fatalities are rare on the slopes; the odds are less than one in a million, the National Ski Areas Assn. reports. Far fewer children are badly injured skiing and snowboarding than riding bikes.

But that’s no comfort if it’s your child and the injury could have been prevented or lessened.

That became clear last winter when 5-year-old Leonie Arguetty of Palm Beach, Fla., was killed after hitting a tree during a ski school class at Aspen Highlands in Colorado. She wasn’t wearing a helmet, and her parents are now suing the ski resort. A month later at the same mountain, another child suffered a head injury, but he was wearing a helmet and quickly recovered.

“We’ve had children in our database who have skied into trees, metal poles, etc., while wearing helmets, and none of them had a head injury more severe than a concussion,” says Lori McBride, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Children’s Hospital of Denver and Levy’s research associate. “It doesn’t take long to become a believer.”

Colorado resorts are leading the charge for helmets. Aspen Ski Resorts, www.aspensnowmass.com, has announced that this season, kids 12 and younger must wear helmets in ski school. So has Crested Butte Mountain Resort, www.cbmr.com. Vail Resorts (which include Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone and Heavenly; visit www.vailresorts.com) will require kids 14 and younger to wear helmets in ski school, though parents can sign a waiver if they don’t wish to comply.

The National Ski Areas Assn., the National Ski Patrol, Professional Ski Instructors of America, the American Assn. of Snowboard Instructors and the National Safety Council, among others, are on the helmet bandwagon with a new Web site, www.lidsonkids.org, meant to promote helmet use and overall safety on the slopes.

Young skiers and boarders account for more than one-third of all the folks hitting the slopes every year -- more than 4 million kids younger than 18, according to the National Sporting Goods Assn.

Just as significant, more parents are taking their kids with them when they ski.

“I get very upset when I see a parent without a helmet skiing with a child who’s got one on,” says Levy, who warns that the older you are, the harder it is to recover from a brain injury.

The experts say that if kids see the skiers and boarders they admire wearing helmets, they are less likely to resist wearing them.

More than 620,000 helmets were sold in 2001, a 40% increase from 1999, according to the Colorado-based Leisure Trends Group. Many kids’ helmets retail for less than $100.

“You wouldn’t play football or hockey without a helmet,” Levy says. “You can talk all you want about skier safety, but you can’t prevent all accidents.”

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Eileen Ogintz’s column runs twice a month. E-mail her at Eileen@takingthekids.com.