Locomotor milestones and babywalkers: cross sectional study.

Few guidelines promoting good health in children are available. Investigations into the development of standing and walking in infants who used babywalkers (wheeled seats that allow infants to move around with their feet on the floor) obtained conflicting results. Crouchman (64 infants) and Siegel and Burton (109 infants) found that the use of babywalkers was associated with delay in crawling. 3 In contrast, no significant differences in achieving independent walking were seen by Crouchman or by Kauffmann and Ridenour (6 sets of twins) in infants who used babywalkers compared with non-users. 4 Siegel and Burton, however, found that babywalker users achieve independent walking at a later age than non-users. We compared the age at which infants who used babywalkers and those who did not reached locomotor developmental milestones.