From: larryk@cton.com (Larry Kollar)
Subject: Re: AMA Calls for Ban on Infant Walkers
Summary: I wouldn't have 'em in houses with stairs, but...
Keywords: Anecdotes, Overreaction?
Organization: Computone Corporation
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 92 17:35:53 GMT

>Subject: AMA Calls for Ban on Infant Walkers
>
[ etc... ]

I heard about the ban on the radio this morning - literally the first 
clue I've had about walkers being dangerous!  To tell the truth, I've always 
thought they were a *safety device* because the walker base kept their 
little hands away from stuff.  (That is, until they got tall enough to tip 
them, at which point we took them out the walker for good.)

Anecdotes about our (good) experiences with walkers follows.  Feel free to 
skip along if you don't want to read them.

Both of my kids (now 3 and almost-5) spent plenty of seat time in walkers, 
but neither one was ever injured although both of them dumped themselves 
out on a couple of occasions.  I realize that's not an indication of perfect 
safety; Mikel (almost-5) can/does climb trees up to 15-20' and hasn't hurt 
himself, though tree climbing IS hazardous.  (I don't encourage him, but I 
was climbing trees at an early age myself and don't worry about it.  Much.)

Julia (the now 3-yr-old) was born 5-1/2 weeks early due to a car wreck.  At 
first, I worried about her since she seemed so apathetic (in constrast to 
Mikel, who was taking everything in from Hour One).  She seemed to be 
developing slowly (at least to me).  Then, she got big enough to put in a 
walker.  After the initial period of "learning the controls," she seemed 
to advance several months in a matter of days!  It seemed like she was 
just waiting to get some control over her world....

To Mikel, the walker was both a transportation device and a tool for 
expressing his understanding of the Hacker Ethic (the part that says, "a 
closed door is an insult; a locked door is an outrage").  He could maneuver 
that thing through gaps I would have sworn were too small for it.  At the 
mom-in-law's house, we'd put a chair across the entrance to the kitchen.  He 
took it, as he took any barricade, as a challenge :-).  After a (short) 
while, he hit upon the idea of repeatedly ramming the chair until it moved 
enough for him to push through.  When he got older, he found that he could 
just grab the chair & haul it back.  It was a lot of fun to watch, and we 
always stopped him before he got *too* rough.

When Julia had the walker, Mikel graduated to a Flintstones-powered (i.e. 
you push it with your feet) toy 3-wheeler ATC.  They would chase each other 
through the house, play Demolition Derby (in which Julia gave as good as she 
got), and just have a great old time.

Most of my comfort level with walkers probably has to do with our house, 
which has a level floor throughout (no steps inside at all).  The only 
changes in level have to do with the floor-to-carpet interface (where Mikel *
did* manage to dump his walker once).  The mom-in-laws' house is similar.

I wonder how many walker-related injuries involve stair-steps.  My sister-in-
law's house has a flight of steps going down from the living room to the 
basement, and I always got nervous watching their kid in his walker 
although they had one of those barriers at the steps.  Perhaps it's not so 
much the walker that's hazardous, but the "terrain" they operate in?

If anyone has statistics on walker-related injuries (how many went down a 
flight of steps, how many just tipped over on level flooring into something, 
how many were outside & rolled into the street, etc), I'd like to see them.  
Heck, maybe we were just lucky....

Oh, and they both did lots of crawling.