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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > Need High Chair for Your Little Ones? (Pedcast)


	Podcast:		Portable Practical Pediatrics
	Episode:		Need High Chair for Your Little Ones? (Pedcast)
	Category:		Kids & family
	Duration:		00:00:00
	Publish Date:		2018-01-29 08:13:13
	Description:		Topic Introduction-Story Doc Smo here. Thanks for joining me today for a lively discussion about children, food, and mealtime. Let's face it, parents with young children are expected to buy a lot of equipment. Here is just a short list: strollers, cribs, pack and plays, stair gates, changing tables, and maybe, just maybe, a high chair? This is just the tip of the iceberg of equipment that is marketed to young families. I've done a previous pedcast about rolling baby walkers in which I came down hard on these devices. I think you can save the $40 you would spend on a walker and instead, put it his or her college fund. But what about high chairs? You know those sit on the floor, free standing chairs with trays, and straps, and a wide base? Generally, pediatricians get involved with high chairs for two reasons; when a toddler or older child falls out of their high chair or when a child has poor food intake because of a feeding problem. Like the child I saw recently who had such poor caloric intake that he was falling off the growth curve at his 15 month checkup. (a condition that pediatricians call failure to thrive). Poor oral intake of food is only one cause of failure to thrive but in this child, it was the big one. When I asked the mother of this child how meals were served in her house, she told me that little Johnny, sat at his little table and chair, separate from the family and ate. She tried to feed him down there but admitted that he wouldn't sit still for more than a minute or two before he gots up and ran around the house. He also was not interested in eating at mealtime, instead, snacking all day, mostly on crackers and milk. Most of the time, he ate by himself, not with the family and he didn't feed himself anything. I thought everything about his eating indicated trouble so I thought it might be useful to discuss, in today's pedcast entitled "Are High Chairs Needed for Today's Kids", two questions: are high chairs needed today and are high chairs safe? Stay tuned and find out. Today's pedcast is being sponsored by one of my favorite blogs, The ChildrensTable.com. There, you will hear a lot about the and savvy and sophisticated feeding of children. The site has been a featured link on my website for years. I love it. If you haven't heard about this wonderful blog, please... take a moment and check it out. Always worldly, fascinating, well written, and informative. That's thechildrenstable.com. Musical Introduction Reasons to use high chair Let's start this discussion with a list of the reasons you should consider feeding your little ones in a high chair: The Convenience - Having a safe place to feed your older infants, toddlers and young preschoolers is fantastic. Pop them in and mealtime is on. No struggling to keep them still, no trying to hold them down in anyway! Parent Freedom- Having junior safely ensconced in the high chair allows the feeding parent a little freedom to organize, multitask, and serve the food. Supports Younger Feeders- Allows younger eaters to sit up since there is some support from the chair. This is useful for children from about 7months to 9 months of age. Puts Parent and Child Eye to Eye-I think this is a big one. High chair feeding gets a child at the right height to feed and communicate with them. This is very important since we now know that parent's transmit attitudes about food to infants by their body language. Parent and child being face to face allows this communication to happen. And while we are talking about it, having mom or dad eating the same food that baby is consuming also transmits the message that the food is good! Safety-This is one of the most obvious reasons to pull out the high chair-stability and safety, as long as child not left alone and is properly restrained. More on that in a moment. Reduces Chance of Choking-I don't have stats or studies to prove this but my intuition tells me that having a young,
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