A few weeks ago, I was watching my son and a group of his friends play a spontaneous game of touch football.

It all started with one kid standing alone in the school playground holding a football. Within a minute, two other boys arrived, and they started to play catch. Then a few more boys arrived and, low and behold, a game broke out.

It reminded me of when I was growing up. I carried a football everywhere I went. Football was a way of life with my peer group. We played games during every recess and after school.

We played in the rain and through blizzards. One time, we actually played in the remnants of a hurricane.

When the grown-ups weren’t looking, we’d sneak away and play tackle football. I received a fair amount of detention time in school for playing tackle football on the playground, which was against the school rules.

I remember the first time I played. I was parking my bike in the rack in front of the school. One of my friends had a ball and asked if I wanted to play. I said sure, but I needed the rules explained to me. After two consecutive days, I was hooked.

At that point, I needed a team to support. The Pittsburgh Steelers had just beaten the Los Angeles Rams in the Super Bowl, so the Steelers seemed like the team to follow.

Like many children of my generation, this was my entry point to fandom, and from that point on football was my life.

Watching my son play in the pick-up game with his friends, I realized that I never see kids playing football in the parks, backyards or on playgrounds anymore.

Recently, as we were making our weekly trip to the local farmers’ market, I decided to try a little experiment. There are always tons of kids playing at the market. I asked my son to bring his football so he and I could play catch.

Within seconds of us starting to throw, the kids began to circle. The ball was being passed around in a circle when one kid said, “Let’s play a game.” I stepped out and let the game begin.

By the end, everyone was laughing and tired. They all seemed to know the rules well, and I wondered where they were getting exposure to the sport. The Madden video game, maybe?

I’ve done this a few more times, and an unplanned game always forms. I’m sure you could do the same experiment with a soccer ball. Kids play. It’s what they do. But I see kids playing soccer everywhere. Watching the kids play football looked foreign to me.

While doing some research for a future USA Football blog, I came across a study that demonstrated casual participation – which is considered important to building player and fan bases for the game – is declining. The thought is throwing a football in the backyard with friends can help develop an interest and thereby lead to a kid signing up for a football league. The study reported only one in four kids play occasionally now, down from one in three in 2010.

So it isn’t just me. Kids really aren’t playing backyard football anymore.

There may be many reasons for this, including that some parents are afraid of football and not allowing their children to take part in causal play activities that could be seen as an entry point of the sport.

When my son was born, one of the things I was looking forward to the most about being a dad was someday going out into the yard and throwing the football like I did with my father. My father was not a football fan, but I loved the game so he took an interest and over the years developed a real love for the New England Patriots, our “home” team who at the time were very bad.

But soon I was guilty of those same fears. As my son grew older and started to develop the physical ability to play sports, the topic of CTE became prominent in the media and in medical literature. At that point, I decided my son was never going to play football. My dream of playing catch died and I “banned” all forms of football from our house.

But as I described in my first blog for USA Football, my son found football and his interest forced me to take a long, hard look at my attitudes and what the science was actually able to tell us.

Our entry point into football has been the local flag football league. Since Day 1 I have been amazed at the number of kids playing in our town. This might be another reason why kids aren’t playing backyard football: maybe there are more organized flag football leagues than there were in 2010. Participation in flag football does require a time commitment, so maybe kids don’t have time to go out and play in the yard. When I was in grade school, there was no organized leagues of any kind until eighth grade so we had no choice but to go outside and start a game.

The same study mentioned above states that participation in flag football increased from 1.086 million to 1.142 million in 2015 among 6 to 12 year olds. There also were 1.23 million kids age 6 to 12 who played tackle football in 2015, up from 1.216 million the year before. So it looks as though kids are still playing football.

This slight bump in participation gives me hope that more parents are becoming comfortable the risks and rewards associated with all sports and parents might be becoming more comfortable with the attention most leagues are giving safety. The emergence of programs such as USA Football’s Heads Up Football, which is endorsed by national medical organizations, have made a significant impact on the sport. As time moves on, training on concussion prevention, recognition and response will continue to improve, and this may be leading to a change in the general attitude about player safety.

I know medically endorsed programs and strategies have made an impact on me and my family.

Now, I spend a great deal of time playing in the yard with my son. It’s a great time to catch up on what’s going on in his world, and we have great talks about life while tossing the ball back and forth. I treasure those moments.

As the NFL advertisement says, football really is family.

Dr. Peter Cummings is board certified in anatomic pathology, forensic pathology and neuropathology. Neuropathology is a subspecialty of pathology focusing on the study diseases and injuries of the brain, muscles, nerves and eyes. Forensic pathology is another subspecialty of pathology focusing on how to interpret injuries and injury patterns. Cummings practices both areas of pathology and is an expert in head trauma.