Infant Walkers: Useful or Harmful?

Infant walkers - seats on wheels - provide no proven benefit and can be dangerous.

• A survey of parents of 150 children aged 5 to 15 months, all users of walkers, found that 47 youngsters had suffered mishaps. Most had bruisers and abrasions, but some had serious injuries when the walkers either tipped over or fell down stairs.

• Report Drs. Carol A. Kavanagh of the Joseph C. Wilson Health Center, Rochester, New Your, and Leonard Banco of Hartford (Connecticut) Hospital, the two pediatricians who made the survey: Infants certainly learn to walk without the practice they get in infant walkers and some research even indicates that infants not using walkers may walk slightly earlier than users.