Having your baby facing away from you in their buggy is not the done thing,

[wrinklytum]

So says research from Dundee University.Apparently they are much better off in a buggy that faces the parent.

Sighs at self.Yet another parenting issue I have failed on.

No space downstairs as that is where the communal lawnmower has to be kept

does anyone know of a light rear facing buggy? Around 7kg

A couple of people have said that people who have forward facing buggies don't want to look at their babies. That is a bit of a mean thing to say IMO.

The research is pretty limited and I'm pretty sure that children who spend minimal time in a buggy with parents who interact with them a lot in other situations aren't going to be damaged.

To say that people buy forward facing buggies because they don't want to interact with/see their babies is silly and patently incorrect for all but a very tiny minority of probably not very nice parents.

Have a look at loolas on ebay, used ones are going for around £100, and they are nice!

One about 6 posts up and someone else much earlier on but I can't be arsed to trawl through again to find it.

Of course it isn't about choosing not to see your child - it's about the choice available and the money you have and the lifestyle the buggy needs to fit into.

I'd love a 50's style pram but unfortunately they're not terribly practical...

I think the research is silly anyway - observing babies being pushed along and then drawing conclusions based that is pretty random. When I read the headline I assumed they had looked at groups of children who had different types of buggies through their buggy-years and then looked at their communication skills at various ages. Now that research would be meaningful.

• meaningful once a load of different other factors had been taken into account anyway!!!

agree with cat64, when i had my ds1 (now 10) there was all this fuss about how we should have a buggy with him facing us so we could talk to him/eye contact as we walked about, it was suppossed to aid his speech or something if he could see us. i refused to turn his pushchair around to be forward facing till he was past 1, even though he used to lean out to see where he was going.
with ds2 he was in a sling for 5 mths till he got way to heavy then he just had a forward facing quinny. he started talking a lot sooner than ds1 (who was past 3 before he said anything)(ds2 is only 2)

it parental preference really.

DD had a puschair which faced away. She started talking from 6 months and was talking in sentences before 18 months. No communication or social problems at all.

DD didn't spend that much time in the pushchair anyway. She loved being carried and she loved being out of her pram.

I ca see this being a problem if a baby spends hours on end in a pushchair never looking at mummy or daddy, but really - how many babies spend life like that?

Experts also havent factored in that if you have a nosey/inquisitive child they do themselves an injury trying to peer around the hood to see where they are going when they are in a rear facing pushchair!

leoemma, I do have a very inquisitive child but he is more interested in seeing us, especially when we are talking, and will do the peering round thing to see where we are if he is facing away from us.

CHildren who face backwards can still SEE stuff, and they can perhaps see it for longer as once they have noticed it, it is still there for them to look at.

But all DC are different, in terms of interaction and which way they like to face. Some will do well, whichever way they face, and some won't.

I suspect it is just yet another thing for new parents to beat themselves up about.

Couldn't see any link to the research report - so here it is for those who want to read it.

I'm wondering at what age they consider a baby should be turned around. With babies under 8 months, I use a rear facing buggy. Once the babies grow out of that - around 8/9/10 months, then they switch to forward facing.

oh i failed on this too then
all the rear-facing buggies seemed mahoosive and/or too expensive

and the next dc will have to put up with facing away too as am too tight to get a different buggy

then again dd didn't spend an awful lot of time in her buggy anyway...
and I still talked to her when she was in there

she is a great talker now at 2.5 so i can't imagine it made that much difference

Like Upwind I live in a flat and have to carry my buggy upstairs everyday. I would like to at least have had the choice of having my baby facing me. If more publicity around this issue means that there someone will come up with some lighter rear facing pushchairs that can only be a good thing can't it?

I loved this comment one of the observers made:
"Couldn't there be sideways facing buggies, where the child can see the parent and the world at the same time, and engage?"
Hmm, interesting idea. Would need to design such a buggy before any research could be done, as I don't know of any Sideways Facing buggies on the market.

Oh another one:
"Lots of people came past with their dogs, and at least half were talking to them, but not the children! And so many parents on mobiles!"
So if you walk with your dog and have a child in a buggy... are you more likely to interact with the dog, than the child. Oh I can see a whole new research study just to answer that question.

The buggy research report includes the instructions and observation sheet, so I may actually try doing one of these observations myself at some point, may be interesting if in my nearest town the results are similar to the national study.

singingtree - good point about the weight of buggies. I have a Britax carrier system thingy - which is quite heavy and bulky. In buggy mode (for children aged 10 months - 2.5 yrs) it can face in either direction. But that ability to change mode, seems to me have come at a cost - weight. It is not the lightest buggy in the world and only just fits in the boot of my Citroen C3.

How is it possible for for kids to be in pushchairs for average 2hrs a day?

Would be hard to identify who the person(s) pushing the buggy was though, without making it obvious that they were being observed (which may then have impacted upon their behaviour). Thus many things will have been guessed. In the smaller study, they knew all the details - but in that study the buggy pusher knew they were being observed - so I feel that must have had implication to their behaviour while being observed. If we know someone is watching us, recording what we do, we do things differently... don't we?

DD2 is in a pushchair for at least that amount of time whilst I walk to dd1's school twice a day. And more if I go elsewhere once I have dropped her off/picked her up. So really it is quite easy.

darksomenight & Marla - good points.

It is still possible to talk to kids in a forward pushchair. They haven't considered that.

Also what about older kids who are forward facing as they walk along.......

Actually dd2's pushchair used to face me, it is one of those that goes either way, but when I had it the other way she spent most of her time craned round trying to see forward.