Buggies could harm babies if they're facing away
- 00:01:48
- ITN
Buggies could harm babies if they're facing away
Babies put in buggies that face away from their mums and dads are left stressed and emotionally impoverished, a report has warned. Experts at Dundee University studied more than 3,000 cases and found that choosing the wrong type of pushchair can damage a child's development. In one experiment, 20 babies were pushed for a mile, half the journey being spent in an away-facing buggy and the other in a toward-facing one. It was discovered that 25 per cent of parents using face-to-face buggies talked to their baby - more than twice as many as those using away-facing buggies. Babies facing towards the buggy-pusher were found to experience a reduced heart rate and were twice as likely to fall asleep, suggesting they were less stressed. Mothers and infants who had a chance to use both types of buggy laughed more frequently with face-to-face buggies. Only one baby in the group of 20 laughed during the away-facing journey, while half laughed during the face-to-face journey. Dr Suzanne Zeedyk, from Dundee University's School of Psychology, said: "Neuroscience has helped us to learn how important social interaction during the early years is for children's brain development. "If babies are spending significant amounts of time in a baby buggy, that undermines their ability to communicate easily with their parent. "At an age when the brain is developing more than it will ever again in life, then this has to impact negatively on their development. "Our data suggests that for many babies today, life in a buggy is emotionally impoverished and possibly stressful. Stressed babies grow into anxious adults. "It looks, from our results, that it is time that we began carrying out larger scale research on this issue. "Parents deserve to be able to make informed choices as to how to best promote their children's emotional, physical, and neurological development." Laura Barbour of the Sutton Trust, which funded the research, added: "The Sutton Trust hopes that buggy manufacturers will look closely at this research, which suggests that face-to-face models improve communication at a very early stage."
ITN | November 21, 2008
