Don't Judge It Until You've Walked a Mile in its Moccasins
Written: May 30 '01 (Updated Jan 15 '03)
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Pros: Takes "cruising" to a whole new level
Cons: Hitting the road can be all too literal at first
The Bottom Line: After a bumpy start, my son hit the road and never looked back. And his friends all dig his cool wheels, too.
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| theeye's Full Review: Activity Walker |
The Fisher Price Activity Walker was an object lesson for me in how not to write an epinion.
Several months ago, my son, who had already become fairly expert at crawling, pulled himself up to standing and very shortly thereafter entered the cruising stage. No, he wasn't frequenting milk bars, buying drinks for the "babes" in hopes of getting into their diapers. "Cruising", in this context, is a technical term for the stage that commonly precedes walking. Babies who are not yet comfortable standing or walking unsupported will hold onto furniture and "walk" themselves from couch to table to chair, a lot like little wall climbers on a horizontal "wall", always carefully maintaining a secure handhold.
Seeing one's previously floorbound child take those first forays into the vertical world is quite a heady experience. Anxious to help him in his newfound mobility, I checked out epinions on push-toy walkers. After reading quite a few rave reviews of the Fisher Price Activity Walker, I made A Buying Decision. I took a quick trip to the now defunct (and very much missed) babycenter.com store and ordered this walker, confident that my son, like the children of many other epinionators, would take one look at this marvel of ergonomic design and miraculously walk, if not on water, then at least across the room.
Several days later, a remarkably small package arrived in the mail. In all of about ten seconds, the side straps were open, the two legs flipped out and secured in place and that compact little block of plastic had instantly and easily transformed into a triangular, wheeled conveyance that promised to magically broaden my son's horizons forever.
My son seemed genuinely delighted when I stood him up behind the walker and he immediately took hold of the handle with both hands. He gave it a little push and it glided across the room smoothly and quietly.
The walker, that is. My son, on the other hand, fell rather roughly and loudly to the marble-tiled floor having achieved not even a single inch of horizontal motion.
The mother in me swooped down and comforted my wailing son. The engineer in me scowled at the walker and muttered something about how its center of gravity was way too high and how it should have been designed in more of a lawn mower shape. The epinionator in me began mentally composing a snide and scathing (though thoroughly entertaining) review.
Fortunately, the procrastinator in me then took over and I never actually committed that review to paper or pixels. As it turns out, my son was just not yet ready for that walker. And that scathing review would not have been particularly helpful.
A month or two later, in his own good time and in his own way, my son suddenly figured it out. He took a few successful steps with that walker one day and by the next day, he was charging across the room at an impressive pace, stopping only when a wall or piece of furniture had the bad sense to interpose itself in his path. We spent the next week or so in rescue mode, lifting son and walker up for quick 180 degree turns which he took quite literally in stride, resuming his relentless forward progress the instant his feet hit the floor again.
A week or two after that first epiphany, he suddenly learned how to maneuver the walker around obstacles and began making complicated circuits around an apartment which I suspect no longer feels quite as vast to him as it once did.
This past weekend, we went with a group of about sixty people from our synagogue to observe a religious holiday in the beautiful, if rather rustic, surroundings of a children's summer camp, not yet overrun by the summer's residents. Remembering the vast size of the dining hall and knowing that we'd be a relatively small group, I decided to bring our Fisher Price Activity Walker with us. Thus far, the walker's use had been confined to a few rather crowded rooms in our apartment. I had hoped that the expanse of empty space in the dining hall would give my son more room to practice walking -- and that it would buy us some time to relax over dinner while he toddled about the other side of the room.
My son had a blast. Of course, we didn't get to relax much as he kept making a beeline for the door, but then again, we've gotten used to the quick rescue. And, in fact, my son wasn't the only one to have a blast with it. The Fisher Price Activity Walker was unanimously voted Most Popular Toy of the weekend: there was hardly a moment that the walker was not being put through its paces by one child or another, ranging in age from 7 months to 14 months. At least three other parents, after observing their own children's delight and success with it were making plans to purchase this walker as soon as they returned to the city. I was also delighted to see that even after being pushed through grass at one point, the walker was no worse for the rather heavy wear.
Having subjected you at this point to rather a surfeit of overblown epinionation on the walking aspect of this toy, it occurs to me that I ought to at least touch upon the "activity" part. As you will note from the picture, the far side of the walker rather resembles an "activity board" (for a definition of an "activity board" and an analysis thereof, I will shamelessly direct you to my epinion on the Singin' Wigglin' Funhouse). The activity board portion of the Activity Walker has proven to be only mildly interesting to my son and his friends, but I attribute this mostly to the rather unparalleled attraction of the walking aspect of the toy. Push beads, rotating flaps and even out-dated telephone dials (what do kids these days think those odd things are?) are appealing when you are trapped in a crib with few other distractions, but they can't compare to the thrill of the road. For this reason, I would tend to recommend this rather basic, but inexpensive, Fisher Price model over the high-tech, bells-and-whistles version available from Vtech.
After a literally bumpy start, the Fisher Price Activity Walker has now earned my unqualified recommendation. It's lightweight, folds compactly for travel, hangs conveniently from our umbrella strollers handles and, most importantly, brings a look of utter delight to my son's eyes. And it's even taught me an important lesson -- never write an epinion on a product until you've given it a fair shot. Now how's that for an educational toy?
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Special note:
You may have heard warnings about the dangers of using walkers. Those warnings are primarily aimed at a different class of walkers, in which the child is suspended in a seat surrounded by a wheeled frame. While caution should of course be used with push toy walkers (especially when using them near stairs), the concerns many have regarding the possible effect on the development of leg strength do not apply to the push toy class of walkers.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 20
Type of Toy: Baby Toy
Age Range of Child: 12 to 36 Months
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Epinions.com ID:
theeye
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Location: New York, NY (it's a hell of a town!)
Reviews written: 66
Trusted by: 165 members
About Me:
Company president, math geek, first time mom at 39, epinion addict. Sleep? Not lately.
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