Surviving the Baby Walker With Wheels (A Twin Dad's Story)

I was precisely halfway through pouring a vaguely warm coffee down my throat when Florence broke the indoor land speed record. We have a narrow Victorian hallway in our London terrace, which is entirely unsuitable for anything wider than a very thin dog. Yet there she was, strapped into a brightly coloured plastic contraption, hurtling toward the kitchen at a velocity that would make a Formula One driver nervous. She clipped the skirting board, spun a full three hundred and sixty degrees, and slammed into the fridge. I spilled my coffee everywhere while she just sat there, cackling like a tiny, unhinged villain.

My mother-in-law had visited that weekend and proudly presented us with this sit-in walker. You know the type I mean. It had a tray covered in plastic buttons that played aggressively cheerful electronic tunes, and it suspended my child about an inch off the ground so she could paddle her feet like a duck caught in a very fast current. As a deeply sleep-deprived twin dad, my initial reaction was pure gratitude. I could finally put one of them down in a self-contained unit that didn't immediately result in someone eating a handful of soil from the houseplant. I foolishly thought I had unlocked a new level of parenting convenience.

I quickly realized that putting a baby in one of these things is essentially handing them the keys to a surprisingly heavy bumper car with zero brakes. Suddenly, Florence could reach the dog's water bowl, the edge of the coffee table, and the lower shelves of my bookcase, all in a fraction of a second. I spent three days jogging behind her in a perpetual state of low-grade panic, trying to intercept her before she launched herself down the small step into the kitchen.

Brenda from the clinic ruins my Tuesday

I took the girls to the clinic for their routine weigh-in the following week. Brenda, our NHS health visitor, is a terrifyingly competent woman who has seen it all and suffers absolutely no fools. While I was wrestling Matilda back into her clothes, I proudly showed Brenda a video on my phone of Florence zooming down our hallway. I expected a chuckle or perhaps a small compliment on my child's advanced mobility. Instead, she sighed heavily and looked at me as if I had just admitted to feeding them exclusively on chocolate digestives.

Brenda informed me that these sit-in walkers are actually an absolute nightmare. From what I could gather through my sleep fog, dangling a baby by their nappy while they push themselves backward on their tiptoes doesn't actually teach them how to walk. I guess it messes with their center of gravity or their core muscles, or whatever mysterious internal mechanics stop us all from falling over when we stand up. She mumbled something about how it teaches them entirely the wrong posture, bypassing all the heavy lifting they're supposed to do when they pull themselves up on furniture.

Apparently, the Canadians literally banned them years ago, which is a fact I find both fascinating and deeply embarrassing since I was currently letting my daughter treat our living room like the M25. If there's one thing I've learned about getting a baby walker with wheels, it's that the ones where they sit suspended in the middle are just mobile waiting rooms for A&E.

Swapping suspension for manual labour

We binned the plastic spaceship that very afternoon. My mother-in-law was distinctly frosty about it on our next FaceTime call, but I deflected by talking about the weather for twenty straight minutes. But we still had a problem. The girls were desperate to be upright. They were pulling themselves up on the sofa, the radiator, and my trouser legs, leaving me trapped in the kitchen unable to move.

That's when I discovered the push-along cart. It's essentially a miniature wooden wheelbarrow for toddlers. Instead of trapping the baby inside a plastic ring, they've to actually pull themselves up on the handlebar, stand on their own two flat feet, and push the heavy trolley forward. It looked incredibly wholesome and analog, like something a Victorian child would play with before going back to work in the coal mines.

When our wooden push trolley arrived, I confidently assembled it while the girls napped, entirely misunderstanding how basic physics worked. I assumed the trolley would just sit there while they pushed it. I didn't factor in that a nine-month-old pulling their entire body weight backward against a lightweight wooden handle would instantly cause the whole thing to tip over and smack them in the face.

The great physics experiment in our hallway

I realized I needed to add ballast to the front tray of the trolley so it wouldn't flip backward or fly out from under them like a skateboard. In my infinite wisdom, I chucked in a Gentle Baby Building Block Set that we had lying around. Now, these are brilliant little blocks for actual playing—they're made of soft rubber, the girls chew on them constantly, and they float in the bath, which makes them highly entertaining when you're trying to wash two squirming toddlers at once. But they weigh absolutely nothing. They're literally designed to be feather-light. Putting them in the trolley tray to weigh it down was like trying to stop a freight train by throwing a marshmallow at it.

Matilda grabbed the handle, the cart shot entirely out from under her hands, she did a spectacular face-plant onto the rug, and I felt like the worst father in the northern hemisphere. I eventually figured out that you've to strap three massive hardback Jamie Oliver cookbooks into the front tray to create enough friction so the wheels won't spin freely.

If you find yourself frantically trying to stop a push cart from flying across the room, you'll probably need to heavily weigh down the front tray with something substantial while furiously adjusting the tension knobs on the wheels before they dent your skirting boards.

Some people say you should put down soft rugs everywhere to cushion their inevitable falls, but frankly, if you've twins and a dog, any rug you buy will be ruined by a mystery fluid spill within forty-eight hours anyway.

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Protecting their feet from my terrible floorboards

Once we had the cart properly weighted with culinary literature, we ran into another issue. Our ground floor is entirely cheap laminate flooring that's inexplicably slippery. The girls were spending most of their days knocking about in their Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuits. Honestly, these suits are perfectly fine. They're soft enough, the organic cotton seems to stop that weird red rash Florence occasionally gets from synthetic fabrics, but my main criteria for clothing at this stage is whether the poppers survive me aggressively ripping them open at three in the morning while half asleep. These ones do, which makes them acceptable in my book.

But below the ankles, we had a crisis. I tried letting them go barefoot, which Brenda the health visitor had heavily implied was the only natural way for a child to learn to walk. But our house is freezing in the winter, and their little feet were turning blue. I tried socks, but they just sort of cartoon-ran on the spot, legs blurring like Scooby-Doo, before falling flat on their backs.

We eventually got these Baby Sneakers, which I genuinely love. I was incredibly resistant to putting shoes on a baby—it always feels a bit ridiculous, like dressing up a cat in a tuxedo—but these aren't stiff like normal trainers. They have this pliable soft sole that bends completely in half in your hand. This meant the girls could still feel the floor beneath them and figure out their balance, but the rubbery grip underneath stopped them from executing a perfect split every time they leaned into the wooden push cart. Plus, they make them look like tiny, very serious boat owners pacing the deck of a yacht.

The aftermath and my bruised shins

It took about three weeks of them aggressively pushing Jamie Oliver up and down the hallway before Florence realized she didn't honestly need to hold on anymore. She let go of the handle one afternoon, stood swaying in the middle of the room like a tiny drunk person at closing time, and took three heavy, stomping steps toward the sofa before collapsing in a heap.

Matilda, furious at being left behind, immediately hijacked the abandoned push cart and rammed it directly into my shin, leaving a bruise that I'm fairly certain will be with me until I die.

Looking back, throwing out the sit-in contraption was the best thing we did, even if it meant I had to spend a month hovering behind them while they pushed a wooden box full of cookbooks around my house. They figured out how to use their own legs, they didn't develop weird tiptoe walking habits, and most importantly, they didn't manage to launch themselves down the kitchen step at thirty miles an hour.

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The messy realities of push carts (FAQ)

Do push carts honestly help babies learn to walk?

From watching my two destroy my hallway, I'd say they don't magically teach them to walk, but they give them a moving anchor to practice with. They have to use their own legs and core to stay upright, unlike those terrifying sit-in ones where they just hang there. It gave them the confidence to stand and move before they had the balance to do it unsupported.

How do I stop the push walker from going too fast?

You have to sabotage it. Seriously. If your model doesn't have little tension knobs on the wheels to create friction, you need to weigh down the front of it. I literally strapped heavy hardback books to the tray. If it's too light, the moment they lean their weight on the handle, it shoots forward and they face-plant. Make it heavy enough that they've to work to push it.

Should they wear shoes when using a push cart indoors?

Barefoot is supposed to be best so they can grip with their toes, but if you live in a freezing house with slippery laminate floors like I do, barefoot leads to frozen toes, and socks lead to them slipping over constantly. We compromised with soft-soled grip shoes that bend completely in half, so they get the traction without locking their foot into a rigid boot.

What age is best to introduce a push-along cart?

Whenever they start aggressively pulling themselves up on your trousers and refusing to sit back down. For us, that was around nine or ten months. There's no point buying one if they're still perfectly happy army-crawling around the floor, because it'll just sit in the corner of your living room mocking you.

Will a wooden cart ruin my floors or walls?

Absolutely. They're going to ram it into your skirting boards, your kitchen cabinets, and your ankles with startling precision. Some carts have little rubber strips on the wheels which helps with the floor scratching, but your paintwork is definitely going to take a hit. I just accepted that our house will look slightly battered for the next five years.