Turn That Baby Towards You!
November 22, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Baby, Parenting
Away-facing strollers stress out babies, according to a study published on Friday by the British charity National Literacy Trust. CNN reports that “parents who choose a stroller that seats their baby facing away from them could risk long-term development problems in their children”—-and I say to myself, now what kind of stroller did we push Charlie around in, once upon a hot Missouri afternoon or down Summit Avenue on early fall days in St. Paul?
We started him off in one of those bulky EvenFlo stroller-detachable baby seat combinations, referred to as “the buggy” by Jim (the baby seat alone, with the handle, was “the bucket”). As noted here, Charlie was in the 90th-plus percentile for height since he was born, so “the bucket” had soon to be retired and “the buggy” with it and then, ah yes, we had one of those strollers that folds up like an umbrella so Charlie indeed faced away from us.
I can just see the headline: “Away-facing strollers lead to autistic withdrawal”…….. [Shakes head; what next?]
As soon as Charlie started to walk (which was when he was 15 to 16 months old—-always seems to take a while for Charlie to get the coordination down), we pretty much stopped using the stroller. Gripping our hands, Charlie walked and, when worn out, rode high on Jim’s shoulder or (yes, this was when Charlie was much smaller than he is now) piggyback. And I developed a good muscle in my left arm from carrying him, balanced on my hip.
There goes the Peg Perego and bye to the Bugaboo……………
Jeff Stimpson
Jill Cornfield
My reaction is a little knee jerk, but it sometimes the recommendations to optimize our children sound a little like those to get away from a bear–multiple and variable .
A few years ago one expert recommendation was to have the children facing outward so that they could be more engaged with the world.
* My mother hauled me and my brother in a rickety stroller that faced out and more resembled a shopping cart than a modern stroller. I’m biased, but we seem to be okay.
* I know people who toted their kids in snugglis who have children with learning disabilities, so go figure.
If, and only if, this has anything like validity, I’m surprised that they didn’t comment on the modern baby carseat, which has its own set of disadvantages and stressors to go with the safety advantages, esp. if it is in the siberia of the backseat if there is no one else seated there.
One recommendation that seems to have some teeth and staying power is to read to, don’t be afraid to talk “mommyese” and spend quality 1:1 time with young kids. That seems to result in better learning trajectories at school entry and beyond. I suspect that it’s more significant in the absolute sense than the direction of the stroller.
I swear they will come up with anything to sell something new. I can just see moms judging one another now according to the type of stroller they use. “Can you believe Mary has her baby in one of those outward facing strollers?! That is so not cool…so not attatchment parenting.” Gag.
I remember a mom commenting to me once because I often held M facing outwards in my arms. She loved looking around and I liked to share where we were with her. The other mom said, “You know. Your child will not properly attatch with you like that.” Whatever. I so do not have time for all of that obsessive parenting.
I tried to get Ben to turn towards me…he was always squirming to get around to be outward facing. He preferred looking at the movement of the trees outside the window to my face. At 4 months I told the pediatrician he wasn’t “bonding” with me…she told me she had seen ‘failure to bond’, and implied it was new mother jitters.
“Look at the way he clings to you!” she said, and you know, he was physically bonded, preferring to be carried even when he got older. I figured he could see more going on up there. I, too, remember thinking how strong my biceps were getting from lugging him around on my hip. Many people thought I carried him too much, and that was why he didn’t walk until he was 15 months old.
Can’t win for losing, I guess.
My wife and I did it all. All of our three children faced backward in the car, forward on the stroller, sat on my shoulders, were carried around on the hip and in the front.
This is the same type of smelly stuff that Bettleheim sold for 25 years. I don’t buy stress as the reason for developmental issues of any kind. I don’t buy this either.
Sounds like the “refrigerator mom” theory in new packaging.
Exactly as Amanda said. The new packaging? “Stroller Mom” - gah! Where do they come up with this kind of crap? And really, did they use a specific control group to determine anything? Do they know the intricacies of each child’s medical and gestational health history? DId the mother’s experience any sort of stress or trauam during prgnancy?
NB: I’m being totally facetious here. The point I’m really trying to make is that there’s no way they could definitively draw these conclusions. And, frankly, who the hell cares? Unless you plunk your child in the stroller and leave him there all day…then you’ve got a bigger issue to deal with!
What Niksmom said.
omg..what’s next…don’t fart in front of your children or else they will have hearing loss and major social anxiety
When will news organizations EVER STOP reporting this kind of nonsense this way? It is so LCD and makes the connection almost inevitable: you need a new stroller Mom. (And you, Mom, didn’t have the right one or else your kid wouldn’t be this way.) Yuck.
Tom too didn’t walk until 15 months (and wasn’t much of a crawler, either, but his pediatricians didn’t worry much about it and neither did I.) He did not like the snugli, and physcially fought being swaddled. (We figured it was the Irish in him, “don’t-fence-me-in syndrome”.) He prefers having someone in the backseat with him–and between Grams and Dad and me there was usually someone riding shotgun with him!–but one of his “things” is watching the world go by facing outwordk, prerably through a window, the faster the better. He enjoys it, and who am I to say he can’t or shouldn’t?
I must have been from the dark ages as ewe neer had a stroller foare childern , we carried them tell they walked then they wre more or less on there own. If they got tired we would stop or carried for a little way. So we did not have to worry about the inney outty thing.
“omg..what’s next…don’t fart in front of your children or else they will have hearing loss and major social anxiety ;-)”
Well… now that you mention it…. that explains so much! You’ve found the holy grail!
How about “car seat” baby syndrome…..
I have only had time to glance through the first study, and there are a lot of questions I have, but my son is bugging me to get on the computer!
One question is how accurate is it to sit and observe a very small slice of someone’s day on the street? It seems they are making a lot of conclusions that aren’t substantiated. If that was only a couple minutes of one child’s day, how can you draw any conclusions about how a parent is with that child the rest of the day? Presumably these kids aren’t in the stroller for 8 hours a day. How does it hurt a kid to have a few minutes or even half an hour in the stroller facing away from a parent? The comments from the observers are very negative, they are judgmental, acting like these are kids who are severely socially deprived.
I’ll look at it some more later, but it looks pretty inadequate at a quick glance.
You have to understand it is the end of the year, and all of these studies our from people that are looking for grants fothje next couple oyears. So you might hear eny thing that might call a study between now and tie last of Jan. I myself about if you have autism you are schizophrenia or if you are schizophrenia you hav autism because i am not sure witch weaigh that goes. Before the year is out you will hear a lot more.