Posted by
Havefaith
16 yrs ago
Dear All,
My daughter is turning 9 month this week. I am thinking of buying a "walker" for her - a car that allows her to sit and with her legs dingling so that she can basically walk around the apartment without us having to bend over to help her - she can just "drive around" herself. I have heard from a friend that it is not a good idea and is no longer recommended by doctors. can you please let me know your thoughts on this? Thank you.
HF
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Walkers are indeed highly discouraged by most pediatricians nowadays. Injuries are unfortunately very common.
One risk is falling down stairs. If you don't have stairs, no issue there. The other risk is the very fast speeds they can get up to (eventually). When they then bump into things they can hurt themselves quite badly.
In the end though, there's the developmental aspect. Despite the claims of some manufacturers, walkers do nothing to improve crawling/walking skills. In fact the reverse may be true. The child may have delayed development because of the use of the walker.
You don't have to help her. In fact, try to resist the temptation. If she wants to get somewhere, let her figure out how to crawl. She will. I compare this to parents who pick their kids up constantly. Let the little tykes learn to walk (within reason) from A to B!
My suggestion to encourage standing/walking is to get some heavy object (heavy enough that it will not topple or move) with a handle on it. A sowing machine in its case is great. Put that on the floor and show baby how to support herself. Eventually she will use it to pull herself up. Great and safe fun for baby.
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Our flat was small so we bought the rainforest jumperoo. At first I thought it was great. But when my daughter started walking, she walked on her toes. I thought all kids did this. Later I found out that kids who walk on their toes are usually the ones who were put in jumpers/walkers.
If you have space, I would recommend a playpen. You can buy hexagonal shaped ones in Bumps 2 Babes, with a mat on the floor. This way, you baby can crawl around and eventually learn to pull herself up by the bars, and walk around inside, holding onto the bars.
It's the normal way that babies learn to walk, and it's the correct way.
Of course, my daughter is walking fine. We kept reminding her to put her feet down. But I know of one friend who's 3 year old still walked on her toes and it was causing her back problems!
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Axptguy38 and Slammy,
Thanks for your advices. I have the playpen and converted her room into a playpen with padded floor. In that case, we wont buy the walker. I just did not know if she was missing out on something that was good for her.
HF
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cd
16 yrs ago
My kids had walkers, they loved them, never had an accident, and all walked at 9 1/2 months, so no developmental delay. But at 9 months your child is probably too old to be getting one now anyway, just get them a push along toy, like the wooden trolley with bricks, that they can push along leaning on to while they practise their walking.
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dadda, I totally agree about them being ready when they are ready. Neither of our girls walked before 18 months, but when they did they were very stable from the start. Also they could crawl astoundingly fast!
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cd
16 yrs ago
I can understand that dadda.When my disabled son was a baby we used to take him to a child development place in Wales. We were taught many things, but one of the first things they taught us was that babies need to go through all the stages of development before going on to the next one. It had been proven many times that a 'clumsy or uncordinated child' had missed out a stage, often crawling or creeping. It might result in something very small i.e like not being able to kick or catch a ball as well as his peers, but if the child at a later stage is made to go back and practise the mssing stage i.e crawling, it will improve the ball catching/kicking etc.
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CD, Axptguy 38, Dadda,
Thank you for your suggestions and advices. We wont be buying her a walker - after reading the different posts.
HF
Dadda - glad to be of help to you on the TTC forum.
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