It's Tuesday morning. Two days since Sunday's head clash. Your kid spent yesterday on the couch, has been to the GP, and this morning is bored, restless, and asking when they can do things again. Run around the backyard. Play on the iPad. Go to school. Go to training Thursday.
This is the week the article you wanted to skip is about.
If you haven't been through the first 24 hours yet, that's its own article, and read it before this one. This piece picks up at the morning of Day 2, with the GP visit already in the diary, and walks through what the rest of the week looks like, what's normal, and where the real decisions sit.
USI is written by parents for parents, not by medical professionals. Everything below is the parent-to-parent translation of the primary sources linked at the bottom of this article. For diagnosis, treatment, and clearance to return to play, the call is your GP's, not ours.
The shape of the week
The mandatory minimum is 21 days from the head injury before your kid can play a competitive contact match again. That is set out in the Australian Concussion Guidelines for Youth and Community Sport, published by the Australian Institute of Sport. Football Australia adopted the same rule in its April 2025 Community Sports Related Concussion Guidelines, which apply to every junior club affiliated with a state body.
Inside those 21 days there is a second condition. Your kid must be 14 days symptom-free at rest before returning to full contact training. If symptoms come back at day 12, the 14-day clock restarts. The 21 is the outer wall. The 14 is the inner gate.
So the week breaks down like this:
- Day 1 to 2: relative rest, first GP visit (covered in the first 24 hours article)
- Day 3 to 7: gradual reintroduction of activity, school in pieces, daily symptom monitoring
- Day 8 to 14: continued reintroduction, school back in shape, second GP visit
- Day 14 onwards: assuming 14 days symptom-free, formal graded return to play begins
- Day 21 at earliest: cleared for competitive match play, only with GP sign-off
This article is about days 3 to 14. The graded return to play that runs from day 14 onwards is its own article, the graded return to play protocol.
Days 3 to 7: how reintroduction actually works
After the first 48 hours, the rule is gradual, calibrated, watched.
Reading is allowed. Watching a movie is allowed. Walking is allowed. Stationary cycling is allowed. The phrase the guidelines use is "as long as the activity does not result in more than mild, brief worsening of symptoms." Brief means under one hour.
If a kid reads for 20 minutes and gets a mild headache that fades within the hour, that is acceptable. They keep reading at that level the next day, then a bit more.
If a kid reads for 20 minutes and the headache is sharp, lasts the rest of the afternoon, and is back the next morning, that is not acceptable. They go back to less. If they cannot move forward without symptoms returning, you book another GP visit.
Each step up takes at least 24 hours to clear. There is no rush. Pushing the next step the same day because the morning was good is the most common mistake parents make in this week.
The same red flag symptoms from the first 24 hours apply for the whole week. If worsening headache, repeated vomiting, increasing drowsiness, seizures, or behavioural change appear at any point, the answer is the ED, not the GP. The full list and what to do is in the first 24 hours article.
School in week one
Most kids will not be at school for the first day or two. After that, the question is not "ready for school" but "ready for a piece of school." A short morning. A quiet room. No tests. No screens. Pickup at lunch.
There is a separate USI article on the school conversation and the practical letter to write to your kid's teacher. The short version: ask the school to keep the cognitive load low for the week, no penalty for missed assessments, and a written note from the GP makes that conversation easier.
The rule of thumb the guidelines use is that a kid should not return to sport until they have successfully returned to school. School comes first. Sport comes after.
The second GP visit
The first GP visit happened in the first 24 to 48 hours and confirmed the diagnosis. The second GP visit, the one this article is about, sits at the end of week one or early in week two. Its job is different.
This visit confirms the 14-day symptom-free count is on track and signs off on starting the graded return to play protocol around day 14. Most GPs handle it in a 15-minute appointment. Bring whatever symptom log you have been keeping (or the HeadCheck app, recommended in the first article) so the GP can see how symptoms have moved across the week.
Without that medical sign-off, the club cannot clear the kid to start the protocol, even if the symptom-free days have been clean. The Football Australia April 2025 guidelines are explicit on this: medical clearance is required before each major step in return to play. Book the appointment now, not at the end of the week.
What recovery looks like over the week
Most kids recover in several days. Some take up to four weeks. If your kid still has concussion symptoms after four weeks, the GP should refer them to a paediatric rehabilitation service.
A useful piece of context from the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne's national child health survey: nearly one in three Australian parents (28 per cent) does not know that concussion can happen without losing consciousness. If your kid did not pass out, that does not mean they did not concuss. The diagnosis is based on symptoms, not on whether they were knocked out.
The most important sentence in this week is the one a kid will not understand and a parent has to: feeling better is not the same as recovered. The injury heals on its own timeline, not on the kid's timeline, not on the coach's timeline, and not on yours.
If symptoms come back at any point in the week, the 14-day clock restarts. That is not a punishment. It is the rule that exists because second injuries to a still-recovering brain are not minor.
The week, in one paragraph
Day 1 to 2 is its own article. Day 3 to 7 is gradual reintroduction calibrated against symptoms, school in pieces before sport, daily symptom monitoring. Day 8 to 14 continues that pattern with a second GP visit at the end of the week to confirm the 14-day symptom-free count and sign off on starting the formal return to play. Day 14 onwards is the formal graded return to play, supervised by a GP. Day 21 at the earliest is competitive match play, only after sign-off. If symptoms come back at any point, the 14-day clock restarts. The 21 days is a minimum, not a target. If the kid still has symptoms at day 21, they wait until fully resolved.
This is what the week is. It is not the article you wanted to read. It is the one that protects your kid.
USI Parents Library is built by parents who got tired of asking the same questions of clubs that did not have time to answer. If this article saved you a panicked Google search at 2 am, that is the point. There is more in the library on recognising concussion in the first five minutes and on the first 24 hours, and on the school and return-to-play conversations once your kid is past day seven. Have a look around when it is quieter than tonight.