Wikicommons/Big Ben
If you’re tired of hearing from your parents about how you rolled around the backseat of your mom’s station wagon, untethered, and you turned out fine, you’ll like this. A new study finds that many grandparents don’t know about the latest safety guidelines for children. Here are the stats:
- 74% say a walker is a good devise to help babies learn to walk. (AAP urges caregivers to get rid of them because of safety concerns)
- 49% say it’s okay to have bumpers, stuffed animals and blankets in cribs. (AAP prefers a “naked crib.
- 33% of grandparents said that the best sleep position for a baby. (Correct answer: on the back, says the American Academy of Pediatrics)
- 24.5% say a 9-month-old, 22-pound child should face forward. (AAP says kids should stay rear-facing until age 2.
Silly grandmas and grandpas! Things aren’t the way they used to be! Surely, today’s parents are so much more civilized than the grandparental generation.
Ah, but wait a sec. Most of these guidelines have changed even since my kids were babies in the late nineties. For instance:
- We had a walker. It looked like a primary-colored car. Did it occur to me that maybe it could get ahead of my toddler while he lands face-down on the floor? Yeah. But one of my babies also crawled backwards and under the couch and disappeared, while I panicked, wondering where the heck my baby went. He was just here! The AAP never warned me about high-set couches and commando babies.
- We had bumpers and a blanket in their cribs. They had the “classic” Winnie the Pooh on them. Very cute baby shower gift.
- Back when my teens were babies, the AAP said it was okay for us to turn our car seats to face forward when the kids hit 20 pounds and a year.
Also, the study involved just 49 grandparent caregivers who completed a 15-question survey. It wasn’t peer reviewed, either.
So before you ban the grand ‘rents from the house, consider how fast safety guidelines change — and sometimes change back. Share the latest studies with the grandparents, and ask them to honor your rules, no matter how ridiculous they sound because you know, you turned out fine.
My MIL would put my daughter to sleep on her stomach in a crib she bought at a yard sale that had slats that were too wide according to safety standards of the time. She also bought a car seat at a garage sale (not a good idea b/c you don’t know if it was in an accident) and had one of those plastic horses that is suspended on a metal frame by exposed wire springs. She also bought this little ride on toy that always tipped over forward. It was literally a death trap over there. But like you, back then I had bumpers and turned the car seat around at 20 lbs – but those were considered safe at that time. I understand the guidelines being hard to keep up with, but once you are aware, there is no excuse to ignore them, which is what my MIL did.
My dad came to the beach with me and my two-year-old twins to “help”…he plucked a decaying crab claw from the shoreline and mimed it like a puppet to talk, then handed it to my daughter. Behold, what was this treasure was given, and from Grandpa, even better! She loved it, of course, so much so that I could not pry the sharp, rotting, could-moonlight-as-a-weapon claw from her tiny hand. She ran with it. She pet it. She hugged it. “Thanks, for the help, Dad!”
I’m with you for the most part… I’m sad that walkers just were NOT made when my kids were little, and my eldest had a bumper (the other two we discovered the horrible evil ‘you’ll-kill-your-child’ cosleeping, but they would have!). But I have to say, the recommendation for rear facing is VERY important. There’s plenty of science as to why it’s MUCH safer for children. You know, as opposed to the “hey, if you leave your kid alone for too long he might find an open door with stairs and squeeze through the doorway and fall down it” danger!