"PF Riley" <pfriley@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:3f0a4fb5.131166638@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Tue, 08 Jul 2003 00:30:56 GMT, "JG" <jg030103@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >"Roger Schlafly" <rogersc@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
> >news:OTmOa.2781$JA.999098385@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >> "JG" <jg030103@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote
> >> > Another article for the "Well, DUH!" file. Amazing how some
people
> >> > manage to walk without someone else (a physician?) telling them
> >> It seems obvious, but a lot of people have trouble distingui****ng
> >> the good pediatrician advice from the ungrounded goofy opinions.
> "A lot of people"... e.g., you.
> The 40% reduction in SIDS deaths due to the Back to Sleep campaign
> (which is five to six babies NOT dying every DAY in the U.S. as a
> result) is well do***ented and consistent worldwide. It has nothing to
> do with opinion.
There's nothing wrong with recommending supine sleeping; a problem
arises, however, when parents of kids who sleep better (i.e., have a
better "quality" of sleep) on their stomachs adamantly refuse to let
them do so. My older daughter was definitely a prone sleeper (as am I).
> >Apparently: "Up to 48 percent of infants develop the deformity."
This
> >certainly doesn't bode well for our country's future, does it? It
looks
> >like we have a generation ("GenX"?) that hasn't been taught to
question
> >"expert" advice and to think, *at all*, for themselves. No wonder so
> >many didn't even blink at WJC's "It depends what 'is' is," or when
> >Congress passed the USA Patriot Act.
> I'd say 48% sounds about right in my experience. What you fail to
> realize is that for most of them, the deformity resolves with time.
> Back to Sleep started in full force around 1994. Do you know many
> 9-year-olds with misshapen heads?
I know a couple of teenagers with rather severe craniofacial
abnormalities, but not because of supine sleeping. What I have
difficulty understanding is why the parents of the 48% with misshapen
heads either didn't notice the problem developing (!) or didn't take
corrective action (e.g., the suggestions in the article) sooner...
> >> There are other drawbacks to putting babies on their backs.
Nowadays,
> >> a lot of babies never even learn to crawl.
> >Yeah, something else a whole generation won't learn...
> Please tell me what the problem with this is. I don't want your
> conjecture, of course, but you should cite studies showing that
> failing to learn to crawl (something many, normally developing and
> healthy babies have done even before Back to Sleep) is detrimental.
There probably isn't one. My older daughter--the prone sleeper--did
crawl (use her forearms to pull herself across the floor, dragging her
extended legs behind her), but she skipped/missed the whole creeping
(moving about on hands and knees, stomach off the floor) stage and went
straight to pulling herself up and walking (9-10 months). Someone
should explain to Doman-Delcato ("patterning") adherents that there's no
immutable motor skills-development sequence.
> Roger: "My kid always slept face down."
> And I bet you put your kid in a walker, too, no?
> Effects of baby walkers on motor and mental development in human
> infants.
> J Dev Behav Pediatr 1999 Oct;20(5):355-61
> Siegel AC; Burton RV
> Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland,
> Ohio, USA.
> Because baby walkers enable precocious locomotion in very young,
> otherwise prelocomotor infants, walker experience might be
> conceptualized in terms of early enrichment. However, walker devices
> prevent visual access to the moving limbs by design. Therefore,
> prelocomotor walker experience may be conceptualized in terms of early
> deprivation, reminiscent of that created in a classic series of animal
> experiments on the critical role of visual feedback in developing
> motor systems. This study analyzed motor and mental development in 109
> human infants, with and without walker experience, between the ages of
> 6 and 15 months. Walker-experienced infants sat, crawled, and walked
> later than no-walker controls, and they scored lower on Bayley scales
> of mental and motor development. Significant effects of walker type,
> frequency, and timing of walker exposure were observed. Considering
> the injury data along with the developmental data, the authors
> conclude that the risks of walker use outweigh the benefit.
I've seen some of the problems walkers and "Johnny Jump Ups"/doorway
"bouncers" can cause; many kids who use them extensively tend to be
"toers"--they end up walking awkwardly on their toes rather than on
their entire (flat) feet.
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