I cringe when I see a baby wearing hard, stiff, "supportive" shoes.
Then I think, "Oh, don't judge. Maybe the mama doesn't know that it is bad for babies to wear those kinds of shoes". Then I think, "Damn the shoe companies for MAKING those stiff shoes and marketing them as being GOOD for babies because they offer support! Babies this age don't need support, they need to feel the earth beneath their feet!" Then I think, "Maybe there is a good reason that baby is wearing those shoes."
Manufacturers make it so difficult to be a mom these days. Tricking us into thinking we've made good choices when the reality is that we have been brain washed to trust the packaging over our instincts.
And now, here is some brainwashing from a handful of soft soled shoe manufactures, whose propaganda I buy into. I mean, here are some websites explaining why soft soled shoes are superior for toddlers :)
The Robeez website sums it up quite nicely: Robeez' soft, flexible soled footwear support normal foot development by allowing a child's foot to develop naturally. Stiff shoes inhibit a baby's growing muscles from strengthening and balancing with the foot and leg. A podiatrist on the website goes on to say, " a hard inflexible shoe can inhibit the child's ability to have their foot develop in a normal fashion." There is a lot more good info on this site about soft soled shoes and when a hard leather shoe is better (major flat footedness).
The Foosies website, which sells a variety of different soft soled shoe brands, goes into a bit more detail about appropriate materials for a good soft sole shoe: For shoe uppers, medical experts recommend only pliable, breathable materials such as soft leather, suede, sheepskin, UItrasuede, etc. Plastic, vinyl and imitation leather should be avoided because they will make young feet perspire excessively.
The PediPed website gives a quick glance at what to look for in shoes for infants (leather soles), new walkers (soft rubber sole), and confidant walkers (flexible rubber sole). I like that they give overlapping age ranges as well as descriptions of the shoes.
Happy walking!
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Because I want to Opt Out and Send it Back.
I am sick of junk mail.
I found a service online, https://www.catalogchoice.org/, which helps to unsubscribe you from various mailing lists. The problem, though, is that those same companies may add you back onto their list if they re-buy your info from one of their partners. So you have to re-cancel your subscriptions to mail you don't want at least once a year. And you have to pay for the preemptive strike service, where they remove your name from the list of names to be sold. Again, your name could get back onto that list at any time, so you have to keep your subscription to this paid service active until the end of time.
ENOUGH! I don't want this junk mail! So what else can I do?
What if I marked it "return to sender, I opt out"? What if EVERYONE who didn't want junk mail took a few minutes to return the letters to the source, and let the source of the problem deal with it? Could that be enough to get these companies to stop wasting paper and consumer's time?
What do you think?
I would like to use this same approach with car seats. Car seats are a huge problem. They are only "good" for 6 years before the plastic degrades to the point that the company can no longer guarantee their effectiveness, and so must be SMASHED to pieces (to prevent an unsuspecting trash picker to use a possibly faulty product putting a child in danger and the car seat manufacturer in an uncomfortable position of liability) and then put into landfill because there is only one facility in the country, that I have found, that will go through the painstaking effort to recycle the recyclable parts, and they are not located anywhere near me and they only process car seats from their area. SO, what if we send back our used car seats to the manufacturer and make them deal with it? I think it is fair to ask producers to be responsible for disposal/recycling of their product if there are no local alternatives.
What do you think?
HP does (or used to do) a nice version of this where they would include a paid envelope for your used toner cartridge to be sent back to their facility to be recycled. That is corporate responsibility!
I found a service online, https://www.catalogchoice.org/, which helps to unsubscribe you from various mailing lists. The problem, though, is that those same companies may add you back onto their list if they re-buy your info from one of their partners. So you have to re-cancel your subscriptions to mail you don't want at least once a year. And you have to pay for the preemptive strike service, where they remove your name from the list of names to be sold. Again, your name could get back onto that list at any time, so you have to keep your subscription to this paid service active until the end of time.
ENOUGH! I don't want this junk mail! So what else can I do?
What if I marked it "return to sender, I opt out"? What if EVERYONE who didn't want junk mail took a few minutes to return the letters to the source, and let the source of the problem deal with it? Could that be enough to get these companies to stop wasting paper and consumer's time?
What do you think?
I would like to use this same approach with car seats. Car seats are a huge problem. They are only "good" for 6 years before the plastic degrades to the point that the company can no longer guarantee their effectiveness, and so must be SMASHED to pieces (to prevent an unsuspecting trash picker to use a possibly faulty product putting a child in danger and the car seat manufacturer in an uncomfortable position of liability) and then put into landfill because there is only one facility in the country, that I have found, that will go through the painstaking effort to recycle the recyclable parts, and they are not located anywhere near me and they only process car seats from their area. SO, what if we send back our used car seats to the manufacturer and make them deal with it? I think it is fair to ask producers to be responsible for disposal/recycling of their product if there are no local alternatives.
What do you think?
HP does (or used to do) a nice version of this where they would include a paid envelope for your used toner cartridge to be sent back to their facility to be recycled. That is corporate responsibility!
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