One for the rear facing buggy lovers.... not recommended for fwd facing buggy users

[TheBlonde]

Babies could be left "emotionally impoverished" by being placed in buggies that face away from their mothers, research claims.

Obviously the researchers didn't look into the practical reasons why most buggies are forward facing

I think my LO likes his FF buggy, it gives him a break from my incesstant chattering.

DS2 conks out within 5 minutes of going out of the door anyway

DS1 walks mostlym but when he is tired, he gets himself into the shopping basket for a ride., He often falls asleep in it.

That means I am a cruel mother who is depriving her kids

I am not given to swearing, but my first thought on hearing this on the news this morning was bks.

My 3 dcs all went in ff buggies, they are now 12, 10 and 7 and are certainly not 'emotionally impoverished'. Complete twaddle.

I agree, complete and utter bs.

Something else to try and bash mothers with, as if we don't have enough to "worry" and feel guilty about anyway.

Agree about the carseat thing, where is the research on that? And why is money being wasted on research like this when the money could be better in so many different ways actually helping children?)

Have had 3 comments on my phil and teds today, because of this being on news this morning.

As if it isn't bad enough having lots of strangers coming up to me and saying, 'Ah poor little boy in the back..'

I have 2 dds by the way!

God people are very sensitive about this issue. It's not about making people feel guilty, it's research into an emerging problem about language skills in young children. In general research has found that the language skills of young children going to school are behind what they were around 50 years ago. ONE of the reasons for this could be ff buggies. TBH it makes sense. I think the research is looking at the impact on young babies. I don't think anyone would deny that babies, especially up to around 3 months need to see their parent's face when pushing the pram/buggy.

Babies communicate from birth through looking at parents faces. All the research was saying is that some of that interaction is being hampered by children being in ff prams.

I have to say though, I agree about Phil and Ted's buggys. where you put the baby basically on a shopping trolley under the buggy. That can't be good - I have never liked them. Apologies to those who have them I guess but just my view.

I had a forward-facing when ds was born, and once he stopped using the carrycot and carseat functions I found that I was not happy with him facing away all the time, and neither was he. So...I looked around on EBay and found a Loola for £100, new condition, and have used it since DS was 9 months. I went back to work (PT) at 10 months and had a 2 hour commute home with him involving lots of walking, and part of the reason I decided to look for a rf pushchair for him was that I didn't want him facing away when I hadn't seen him all day.

I do realise though that because of not having a car DS is in his pushchair a lot more than other children, and my guess is that in a child who only uses the pushchair around the shops etc and travels in the car mostly it won't be as relevant.

I do appreciate having him facing me, especially walking back from his nursery. We sing songs (he does the actions), I talk to him about what we are going to have for tea, I ask him questions about things he knows and generally chat to him. I couldn't do this with the other pushchair.

When my chidren were little, late 80s, early 90s, there were loads of rear facing puschairs to coose from. I even had an umbrella fold one that could face either way. What happened to them, some manufacturers must still have the old designs, they just need updating. I don't see why all the rear facing puschairs are so expensive now.
( Jeez, I sound like my mother- " things were different in my day...." )

choose from, obv

I think they are hoping this research will nudge manufacturers into making buggies that do both. At the moment it is just the expensive ones that switch (Bugaboo and Quinny do I think.)

Not sure what the answer is if you have twins though or a double of some kind!

I can relate to this, tbh
I mostly carried ds1 until he was about 2 years old, and found when I put him in the (front facing) buggy, that I really missed the eye contact and conversation that we would have
I noticed a big difference in how I felt and how I related to him
basically when he was forward facing I was just pushing his body around, we weren't interacting at all
when in sling (only thing I have to compare to as we don't have rear facing buggy) we would constantly make eye contact, chat and interact together

fifitot - can we have a link to your claim about language skills please?: "In general research has found that the language skills of young children going to school are behind what they were around 50 years ago."

Should we blame this all on Owen Maclaren then?

"while heart rates were slightly lower in the infants who were first taken out in away-facing buggies then switched to the more relaxing forward-facing pushchair."

could somebody explain the difference between an away-facing buggy and a forward-facing pushchair - aren't they the same thing?

Also AFAIK, in the hey day of the traditional pram, the longest conversation that most babies would have had would have been with the cat peering through the cat net as they exercised their lungs at the bottom of the garden.

Also, re: Phil and Ted's, the baby looks up at your face if it is in the baby position.

It's not a 'claim' and I haven't got a link, it was on a programme I watched about children's literacy and language skills about 3 weeks ago and coincidentally the same woman from the national literacy assoc or whatever has been on the news about the research about buggys.

I don't think they are saying it is all about the buggys at all. I think it is one avenue they are looking at. There's probably loads of stuff on it if you wanted to google.

I have a rear facing - it really mattered to me, but everyone else can do as they please.

I also hate Phil & Ted's though and cried in the shop (pregnant and hormonal) when assistant showed me one and suggested that I might like to put my precious third born down near the ground with the exhaust, and great view of pram or legs. Cried even more when DH thought it looked great & v practical

fifitot - okay then, "your statement"

The baby position of a P&T is just the normal buggy completely reclined - It possibly looks higher because the toddler is higher than normal.

I would have thought that making love in a buggy was a fairly high-risk activity, whether it faced forwards of backwards . Call me over-cautious....

Perhaps childrens language skills are behind a couple of generations ago but, TBH, I think the problem is perhaps a little more complex than pin pointing it to FF buggies.

My gran used to leave her babies in a pram in the garden for hours whilst she got on with the housework. Can't have been a whole lot of eye contact going on then.

My mum says that people used to think she was some sort of wierdo for the way she used to chat all the time to my sister and I (in a crappy little forward facing stroller), because we were 'only children'. This was in the late 60's, and she remembers mums sitting in the park with all the prams and buggies lined up with the babies crying, while the mums sat on the park bench chatting.

I don't think this is mother bashing, as far as I know it's part of a whole load of research the NLT Trust and other bodies are doing into helping parents improve their child's language development, part of the 'talk to your baby' project. A lot of it is common sense, if you are interacting loads with your baby then the odd half hour in a forward facing buggy isn't going to do much harm. But the combination of FF buggies, TV and other background noise in the home and less one-to-one verbal and eye contact with young children is going to have an effect. This is what research is for: looking at variables and raising questions over their effects.

It felt like mother bashing to me because to make the change to baby facing me would present so many practical difficulties. I'm sure that's true for many parents.

DS2 has a speech problem so now I have the worry that somehow a factor as minor as the findings of this study may be the cause, in which case it feels like MY fault -- even though the cause-effect can't be proven in our case, and to switch to baby-facing-me for DS4 would create loads of extra stresses on me, personally. So now I feel selfish if I don't follow findings of this study, even though it's only one study, and I probably have a dozen very pressing practical reasons not to.

Blech.

Yep, this is bollocks. They should've observed more children for a longer period instead of one small group for a long period and another large group for a short period.

I chatted to my DS since he was born. He started off in a sling, then a rear facing buggy which converted to face the front when he was able to sit up himself.

In his case, it wasn't the direction of his buggy that "emotionally impoverished" him, but autism. They'll be telling me the front facing buggy caused that next

Well I certainly didnt feel attacked in any way. I thought it completely agreed with what many mothers want- a parent facing pushchair. The number of threads on here asking for a light, cheap rear facing pushchair is staggering. Pushchair manufacturers should be taking note and not as has been said charging a fortune for a basic design requirement. That said there are cheaper options around, if you look hard.