For a Smart Happy Baby Please Turn That Stroller Around and Get Some Face-Time!

I'm years past pushing a baby buggy, but one day soon I'll get another chance.  This recently published study from England's National Literacy Trust certainly turns stroller design on its head.  Forget about cup holders & storage compartments!  If you want a secure, smart, happy baby, it's all about which way the baby is facing--towards the parent or away from the parent.

Who would have thought?

We all know how important it is to talk to your baby--but that extends to stroller time as well!   In England babies spend up to 2 hours a day in a stroller, so it's fair to ask:

What's life like in a baby buggy, anyway?

I found this little nugget from VSL.

"According to a new study, babies who sat in strollers that faced their parents during their daily walks had twice as many conversations, laughed ten times as much, and suffered less stress than babies who were in the more common, front-facing models."  

Even developmental psychologist Dr. Suzanne Zeedyk, the lead researcher of this Dundee University study, admits she hadn't given strollers much thought beforehand.

"Even as a developmental psychologist, this was not an issue I had previously thought about, and I was surprised to find that no other scientists had studied it either. 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 experimental study showed that, simply by turning the buggy around, parents' rate of talking to their baby doubled. I had also not anticipated that such a high percentage of babies in face-to-face buggies would be sleeping – 52%, against only 27% in away facing buggies. It was a complete surprise. This is significant as you are more likely to sleep when you are feeling relaxed and safe.

"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."

Advice from Liz Attenborough, Manager of the Talk to Your Baby Campaign:
If you have a two-way facing buggy--use the sociable face-face option as the standard.  Hopefully, stroller manufacturers will take note of this research and design a stroller to turn the babies around to face their parents (or grandparents).

To read more about the stroller study click here and here.