Babywalkers should be banned, says study

BABYWALKERS should be banned because they delay walking and can cause injuries to young children, according to a study published yesterday.

Seven out of ten health visitors believed the toddling equipment used by millions of parents worldwide should be outlawed, researchers found.

Yet many found it difficult to persuade people not to use them and 60% said parents continued to use babywalkers even after a child had been hurt.

The research, published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, was based on the experiences of 61 health visitors in the East Midlands in England.

Sixty seven percent of those questioned thought that babywalkers were likely to delay walking in young children.

But they believed that most parents’ attitudes towards babywalkers were positive and that it was hard to persuade them to stop using the items.

The findings appear to re-affirm concerns raised by a University College Dublin professor in June 2002.

Dr Mary Garrett, director of the School of Physiotherapy at UCD, conducted a cross sectional survey of 190 normal healthy infants, 102 of whom used babywalkers (starting to use them between 26 and 28 weeks of age and finishing between 50 and 54 weeks). The parents of the infants recorded the age at which their child did each of the following:

Raised their head when lying down; rolled over; sat with support; sat alone; crawled; stood with support; walked with support; stood alone; walked alone.

The researchers found that compared to infants who did not use babywalkers those infants who did crawled on average 3.9 weeks later, stood alone on average 3.32 weeks later, and walked alone on average 2.98 weeks later. The researchers calculated that for each 24 hours of babywalker use there was a delay of 3.3 days in walking alone and a 3.7 day delay in standing alone.

The authors concluded that their study provided evidence babywalkers are associated with delay in achieving normal locomotor milestones. The authors commented that as babywalkers are also known to increase the risk of injuries in infancy (based on other published research), the use of babywalkers should be discouraged.