Maternal Intervention Strategies in Enforcing Children's Bicycle Helmet Use

We investigated maternal methods of enforcing helmet usage in children. Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recently called for stronger parenting strategies to increase bicycle-helmet use, there has been virtually no study of typical parenting strategies to influence children to wear their helmets. In the present study, mothers of second- and eighth-grade children responded to 12 vignettes portraying typical excuses children give for not wearing a helmet. Even after continued child refusal, mothers reported they would try to persuade, discuss or command their child to wear the helmet, more often than they would use consequences. Initially, there were no age or gender effects, but as the vignettes portrayed the child protesting, mothers of second-grade girls suggested the use of consequences more often than mothers of eighth-graders. The reverse was true for mothers of second-grade boys, although these differences typically did not reach statistical significance. Overall, the data support the American Academy of Pediatrics' suggestion for more effective parenting strategies, especially for children at highest risk for bicycle injury.