Fiver, I didn’t say it was definitely beneficial in the long run. Just something that was done - old wive’s tale and all that. Couldn’t hurt, might help - plus the side benefit of concentrated attention on the kid.
[hijack] A number of tribes of Native Americans (Pacific Northwest and Western Plains) used to shape their heads to meet the cultural standard of beauty, which was a sloping forehead. They would strap the babies in backboards that had pieces of wood at the front of the head that would press of the forehead to push it back and slope it.
In Montana, “Flathead” (as in Flathead Lake, Flathead River, and Flathead Valley) was the English term referring to such Indians. (And it wasn’t particularly derrogatory, just descriptive – like the name Blackfeet given to a different tribe that sometimes painted their feet.) Sort of ironically, though, the Montana Indians known as Flatheads (the Salish-Kootenai of the Flathead Valley) were not “flatheads” – ie, they didn’t practice that custom. But several other Salish tribes (most from Northern Idaho and Washington), with whom the Montana Salish traded, did.
The practice was stamped out vociferously by early Catholic missionaries, who were appalled by it.
[/hijack]
Here is everything that you ever wanted to know about ARTIFICIAL CRANIAL DEFORMATION.
I really would like to think that “don’t crush your child’s skull in your hands” falls in the category of So Damn Obvious As To Go Without Saying. Seems not. Appalling.
I don’t mean this as a joke, really . . . but I just had a flash of every baby coming out of the birthing room or hospital with “DO NOT CRUSH” tattooed on their heads.