Weird Question....

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone can help me out with this one? My partner and i are having a disagreement regarding me holding our 5 month old baby by the waist and letting him stand on my lap holding the majority of his own body weight. ( i am not encouraging him to walk or anything like that) I think that this is fine as it is only for a few seconds at a time and i feel that it is strengthening his muscles. My partner thinks that this will give him back problems in the future. He has asked me to get information to prove to him that it will not hurt him if i let him hold his own weight. Can anyone direct me to some info that says its ok and that he will be fine? How else does a baby learn if they are just left to lie on the floor?

Thanks

I have heard that it's not good recently but we always did it with our kids and none of them have back issues. I don't know where to direct you for advice though sorry.

I know anecdotal evidence is not any kind of hard evidence, but fwiw its something we've done with our LO- actually, he insisted on it and loved it and would bounce away like a crazy thing. So far he seems to be fine.

You might be interested in looking at some of the research on jolly jumpers, because there are similar concerns about those (it being much the same action). There was a fairly detailed thread a little while back somewhere on here about them, and it seemed the general idea was that while you didn't want to have them in a JJ (or holding them standing on their legs) for an extended period of time, it was fine for a while. The other thing to watch was that they take their weight as much as possible on their whole foot rather than their toes. The thread was quite good if you want to find it, or just google about jolly jumpers.

HTH!!

I have heard that if you over use...like over fifteen mins at a time....jolly jumper and walker then that 'can' cause back problems later in life...but DD has always been a very upright baby, always standing on our lap while we held her up, im no expert obviously but i would say that at five months old it would be good for him to be doing it for a short time.

Ava-Jayde has been able to put pressure on her own legs since she was 2 weeks old, and Im not even exaggerating she's a freak of nature lol ... she use to do that all time when she was a baby, she's had unbelievably strong legs. I think though it's like anything, darl. Don't try and make them walk or you'll apparently bow their legs etc etc.. im sure if it's not for long periods of time your little one will be fine. And i'm not really sure it makes them walk quicker anyway dp did it with ava heaps and she walked at 10.5 months...

thanks guys! Actually it was as simple as looking up the development stages in Baby Love and also the Huggies website, for his age which says that the baby should be able to bear his own weight (with help) by six months.