Jill Duggar Criticized For Sharing Potentially Dangerous ‘Car Seat Trick’
Jill Duggar recently shared what she believes is a nifty lifehack for moms on the go, but some critics fear that following her advice could end in disaster. According to In Touch Weekly, the mother of two was harshly criticized for passing along a “car seat trick” that she learned from her mother, former 19 Kids and Counting star Michelle Duggar.
On Thursday, Jill Duggar posted a new video on the Dillard Family website. The 26-year-old no longer appears on the TLC series Counting On with her siblings, so she and her husband, 29-year-old Derick Dillard, have been using a combination of their revamped website, various social media accounts, and YouTube to keep fans updated on what’s going on in their lives. In her latest blog post/video, Jill plays the role of a mommy vlogger by sharing a space-saving tip for mothers who don’t want to lug a full-sized stroller around when they take their infants somewhere that’s going to require a lot of walking in tight spaces.
“I do this all the time with my umbrella stroller and my baby car seat,” Jill says to the camera. “Whenever I know that I’m going to be in a tight space, like at church or somewhere, instead of taking the big single stroller, I just take my umbrella stroller and put the car seat on it.”
Infant Car Seat Trick https://t.co/lv4h0Xfsvm pic.twitter.com/O8dpoHu6R0
— Jill (Duggar)Dillard (@jillmdillard) April 26, 2018
In her video, Jill demonstrates how she keeps the bulky car seat from falling off of the small umbrella stroller by pushing the handle bar on the car seat all the way back and hooking it over the handles of the stroller. She then slides it down until it rests on the seat of the stroller.
Jill shared a link to her video demonstration on Twitter, and a large number of her followers reacted to it by warning her that her stroller/car seat rig may not be safe. They pointed out that the two pieces of baby gear were not designed to be used together in this way, and they cautioned Jill that the heavy car seat could cause the lightweight stroller to tip over.
According to Jill, Michelle Duggar is responsible for encouraging her to use a car seat and an umbrella stroller in this manner, and the evidence that her mom regularly utilized the controversial mommy hack is all over the internet. There’s a 2010 forum discussion on the BabyCenter website criticizing the mother of 19 for using the method to transport her youngest child, Josie, around when she was a tiny baby.
“It seems very unsafe to me and I don’t understand how she doesn’t know this!” wrote one concerned mother.
Similar discussions took place among members of the CafeMom and What to Expect web communities. The mother who began a thread in the latter revealed that she actually tried the trick, and it didn’t work out so well. Her car seat got stuck on her stroller, and her baby was tilted forward “like she was on some kind of roller-coaster ride.”
Unfortunately, it looks like Jill Duggar didn’t do an internet search before trying the car seat trick herself.
