(copy of post on several pages) Canada Bans Baby Walkers

I got rid of my walker after #3. That was over 13 yrs ago. #’s 2 and 3 had fallen, at least partially, down stairs in their walkers, and # 3 is a toe walker, since day one. We’ve been through Physical Therapy twice for it, the first time for 2 years, and she had to wear AFO’s (plastic braces with hinges so she could bend her feet but prevented toe walking, a lot of kids with CP wear the same thing) The therapist told me that walker, b/c of the positioning, leads to the shortened achilles, which leads to toe walking. My youngest never went into a walker, we bought one of those exersaucer things and kept the setting low so if he stood, he had to push up and stand all the way. I don’t like those things at all.

My oldest daughter never had a walker, but she had just about everything else, including the play-yard (formerly called the play-pen, but by then it wasn’t PC to call it that…), the wind-up swing, gosh, everything. She didn’t walk until she was 14 months old, though. I believe that was because she didn’t have to; all of us picked her up and carried her everywhere! She didn’t have to walk! She was quite a crawler though.

I did buy a walker for my youngest. I got rid of it, however, when I came home from work one day, and my babysitter had her outside in the yard, on the cement part, with the walker tied to a fence. I had noticed over-use of the walker before that, but that was the last straw! She walked at 9 months, by the way. She had to, being the second child, and sister to the “high manintenance” child…

The American Academy of Pediatrics has long warned against the baby walker. Here is their link.

http://www.aap.org/family/babywalkers.htm

I think my older child was in a walker (given to us) once or twice and didn’t care for it. Plus, with my mom working in early intervention at the time she told us about the issues with muscle development that Roxie mentioned so we were reluctant to use it anyway. We did get the exersaucer for the younger one as we could afford a lot more at that point. By the way, both of my kids were late walkers but early talkers. They still haven’t stopped talking!

I didn’t want to muddy the issue in the original post with other issues, but yes, I have also seen serious muscle development problems with the walkers.

One young relative was, and still is, very tall. He loved the walker and his fond mother hated to take him out of it because he yelled so much. (pig-headed is far too mild a word for my family, from birth; unfortunately mother wasn’t ready to fight it in her own child.) When he got to eighteen months and tried to walk, he had strong legs but had never developed the arm, shoulder, and back muscles needed to support his head; he walked like a bobble-head doll. He is now in his mid-twenties, tall, never had any serious accidents, and should be in the prime of his youth, but he already has serious back problems.

Another child of a neighbour’s developed the habit in the walker of pushing with the sides of the feet rather than the soles, and was developing a foot and leg deformity.

After posting the news item, I crunched some numbers and frightened myself further. Canada’s population is thirty million. Assuming that the walkers are used for 1.5 years betwen ages six months and two years and that the average lifespan is 75 years, the proportion of kids in the walker age group is about 1.5/75 = 3/150 = 1/50 of the population. Then the number of kids inthis age group is 1/50 x 30 million or about 600 thousand.
Not all kids have the walkers; some parents have heard the warnings, some won’t waste the money, and many come from other countries and cultures and think the whole idea is ridiculous. Just as an estimate, let’s say one child in four is using a walker.
That means 1/4 of 600 thousand, or 150 thousand, using the walkers.
The news report said that 1 thousand are injured annually! That means the risk is 1 in 150 that a child using the walker will have an injury serious enough to be reported by a hospital — that doesn’t even count all the thousands who fall down the stairs but don’t show any obvious damage!!
1 in 150 to the emergency ward is a HUGE risk. People fight to ban toys and soothers and food items for risks of one in a few hundred thousand or one in millions!
So please destroy — don’t get rid of but destroy — those things.

Voluntary bans are not working — the things are built to last forever (an unfortunate success of technology) and are passed on and sold at garage sales etc. Also they are available from other countries (including for us the USA) on the internet. Canada has had a voluntary ban for eight years, and the injuries still remain so high. So work to ban them, and destroy them.

For anyone not taking this issue as seriously as they should…

From the Toronto Star:

Canada bans sale of `dangerous’ baby walkers
Tied to 2,000 injuries in 12-year span `Many parents don’t know the risks’

BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH
OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA—Canada has become the first country in the world to ban infant walkers in a strong signal to parents about the dangers posed by these once popular products.

Health Canada announced yesterday it had imposed an immediate prohibition on the sale, resale, advertisement and importation of baby walkers into the country.

“Canadians must know about the dangers posed to infants through the use of baby walkers,” Health Minister Pierre Pettigrew said in announcing the move.

The prohibition also applies to the sale of second-hand baby walkers at flea markets or garage sales. The government is urging anyone who has a baby walker to dismantle it and throw it in the garbage.

Pediatricians and child-safety advocates endorsed the ban, which they have long called for. But now they worry about the fate of thousands of walkers tucked away in closets that might be passed down among family members. Safe Kids Canada, an advocacy group, estimated last year there are 500,000 walkers in the country.

“Many, many parents simply don’t know that wheeled walkers are dangerous … that’s why there’s so many,” said Dr. Robin Walker, an Ottawa pediatrician and president-elect of the Canadian Pediatric Society.

“Clearly there’s a big gap in public education,” he said.

That’s why pediatricians are calling on government to back its ban with strict enforcement and an ambitious education campaign to get the word out.

The wheeled walkers were meant for children who can sit up but can’t yet walk on their own. But experts say babies simply don’t have the skills, reflexes or cognitive abilities needed to use the walkers safely.

Between 1990 and 2002, Health Canada estimates that almost 2,000 children were injured in accidents involving walkers. However Safe Kids Canada says the accident rate is even higher and estimates some 1,000 babies a year are injured.

“There are many dangers. The worst accidents happen when children fall down stairs. Even a gate doesn’t prevent that because there’s enough momentum in these things that they can go straight through,” Walker said.

In those accidents, children have suffered multiple fractures, internal injuries, concussions and even skull fractures, he said. In other cases, the walkers have put children within reach of dangers such as poisons in cupboards, electrical outlets and pots on the stove.

There’s no evidence either that the walkers actually encourage babies to walk, Walker said. “They may actually get in the way of it because the muscular development they encourage is not the same as walking.”

Most big retail stores have not stocked walkers since a voluntary ban went into effect in 1989. However, federal inspectors have noticed a growing number of street vendors and small retailers selling the products.

One local mother who purchased a walker for her 1-year-old daughter thinks the ban is misguided, the Star’s Gabe Gonda reports.

“I totally disagree with it,” said the 33-year-old Woodbridge woman, who didn’t want her name used. “It gave my daughter so much independence, so much strength. It allowed her to feel like she wasn’t alone and it allowed me a sense of security.”

The woman bought the walker during a trip to Buffalo, N.Y.

Here is what the American Academy of Pediatrics has to say about baby walkers. Read on please:

AAP Fact Sheet
Baby Walkers are Dangerous!

Baby walkers send more than 14,000 children to the hospital every year.
34 children have died since 1973 because of baby walkers.
Children in baby walkers can:

Roll down the stairs - which can cause broken bones and head injuries. This is how most children get hurt in baby walkers.

Get burned - a child can reach higher when in a walker. A cup of hot coffee on the table, pot handles on the stove, a radiator, fireplace, or space heater are all now in baby’s reach.

Drown - a child can fall into a pool, bathtub, or toilet while in a walker.

Be poisoned - reaching high objects is easier in a walker.

Pinch fingers and toes - by getting them caught between the walker and furniture.

There are no benefits to baby walkers.

You may think a walker can help your child learn to walk. But, in fact, walkers do not help children walk sooner. Also, some babies may get sore leg muscles from spending too much time in a walker. Most walker injuries happen while adults are watching. Parents and other caregivers simply cannot respond quickly enough. A child in a walker can move more than 3 feet in 1 second! Therefore, walkers are never safe to use, even with close adult supervision. Make sure there are no walkers at home or wherever your child is being cared for. Child care facilities should not allow the use of baby walkers.

If your child is in child care at a center or at someone else’s home, make sure there are no walkers.

Throw out your baby walkers!

Try something just as enjoyable but safer, like:

“Stationary walkers” - have no wheels but have seats that rotate and bounce.
Play pens - great safety zones for children as they learn to sit, crawl, or walk.
High chairs - older children often enjoy sitting up in a high chair and playing with toys on the tray.
As of July 1, 1997, new safety standards were implemented for baby walkers. Walkers are now made wider so they cannot fit through most doorways and can stop at the edge of a step. But these new walker designs will not prevent all injuries from walkers. They still have wheels, so children can still move fast and reach higher.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Association for Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions (NACHRI) have called for a ban on the manufacture and sale of baby walkers with wheels.

Keep your child safe - throw away your baby walker.

A Must-Read for parents of small children :

Book takes unsafe baby products, firms to task

By Jayne O’Donnell, USA TODAY

It’s No Accident: How Corporations Sell Dangerous Baby Products

By Marla Felcher
Common Courage Press
281 pp

After Marla Felcher watched her husband help carry the tiny casket of a friend’s 17-month-old son, she vowed to do something about it.

What she did was write a book that takes children’s product makers to task for often knowingly selling products that could injure and kill children, such as Danny Keysar, one of six children who died in a Playskool portable crib.

It’s No Accident: How Corporations Sell Dangerous Baby Products is most compelling when it tells the tales of the victims, using government and court documents chilling in their detail. Though many of the cases date to the early 1990s, they illustrate the lengths companies will go to avoid acknowledging that their products can be dangerous — and how product-safety law sometimes protects companies more than consumers.

Felcher devotes much space to Cosco, including a Justice Department lawsuit over its failure to report entrapments in its toddler bed and guard rails. She reports that a 1996 settlement meant Cosco never had to answer allegations that it sold the recalled beds in Mexico but said they were destroyed.

Graco is pictured just as negatively. Felcher recounts case after case of parents putting infants in the Graco Convert-a-Cradle in the early 1990s, only to return to find them suffocated in the bottom corner. Felcher says the company blamed parents for not supervising their children in the cradle, in which 14 infants died. But Graco’s own engineers had found the head-to-toe swinging could shift babies into a corner where they might not be able to breathe.

The book benefits from Felcher’s persistence and patience. It has meticulous footnotes and references to Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) documents that took up to a year to obtain. Federal law requires that CPSC documents be requested under the Freedom of Information Act and that the agency must get a company’s permission to release the files. Files on an active investigation — which can last for years — are not released until the case is closed.

Felcher, a freelance writer and university professor, will not be mistaken for a disinterested party. She is unrelenting in her criticism of companies’ profit motives, and the rants can wear on a reader.

The book also can be as dry as a civics textbook when it covers the intricacies of consumer-product law.

But real life — and death — stories make her book difficult to put down and easily forgiven for shortcomings. With so much information that manufacturers don’t want known, it should be required reading for parents of young children.

… baby walkers can possibly even delay a child’s development, as well as be a serious danger. Read on:

The Bad Baby Development Device?

Many parents use baby walkers to give their their children exercise. Unfortunately new research from of New York at Buffalo and Case Western Reserve University indicates that rather than helping these devices may slow the development of infants, particularly in their development of skills like sitting upright, crawling and walking.

According to Roger V. Burton, PhD, head of the research team, “Newer-style walkers, which have large trays that prevent infants from seeing their moving feet and from grasping objects around them, lead to greater delays in physical and mental development”.

The researchers studied the mental and physical development of 109 predominately white infants from the New York area. About half had never used a walker, about a third used newer-style walkers, and the remainder used older-style walkers that allowed them to see their moving feet grab at objects around them.

The infants in the study were first tested at either 6, 9, or 12 months of age, and then re-tested three months later, using a scaled model used to measure physical and mental development. Parents then gave feedvback on when the children achieved developmental milestones like sitting, crawling, and walking.

Those babies who used newer-style sat upright, crawled, and walked later than infants who had never used a walker. Infants who used older -style walkers learned to sit and walk at about the same age as the no-walker group, but they learned to crawl at about the same age as the children who used the newer-style walkers.

On the developmental tests side, infants who used newer-style walkers had the lowest scores on physical and mental development. On the physical development tests, infants who used older-style walkers received lower scores than the no-walker group, but the differences were not statistically different.

On mental performance, those who used older-style walkers scored somewhere between the no-walker and newer-style walker groups.

The researchers think that use of newer-style walkers leads to physical developmental delays because the walkers’ large trays restrict infants’ view of their moving legs, depriving them of visual feedback that would help them learn how their bodies move through space. Baby walkers also prevent infants from exploring and grabbing at things around them, which is critical to their early mental development.

“Although in some infants the effect of walker use on mental development was measurable for as long as 10 months after initial use, it is likely that normal infants who use newer-style walkers will catch up to their no-walker peers when they walk and are no longer restricted by being put into a walker. When the danger factor is considered in conjunction with the developmental data presented by our study, the risks seem to outweigh any possible benefits of early walker exposure,” said Burton.

According to the researchers, in the United States 70 to 90 percent of parents of one-year-olds use baby walkers. Why these thing have not been banned is somewhat of an oddity in a country where consumer rights are paramount. This is even more unbelivable when you consider that in 1994 a report from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission cited baby walkers as responsible for more injuries than any other product for children!

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19990912132432data_trunc_sys.shtml