Baby Unneccesities: Highchair Excess

As a public service to the DadCentric community, we occasionally look at items parents are brainwashed into thinking they and their little ones can't live without when -- trust us -- they really can. This series is called Baby Unnecessities. Our latest installment looks at overly expensive and complex highchairs.

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Since I lived in a galaxy far, far away from my parents back in my children's days of Gerbers and dry Cheerios, we'd hop on a plane a few times a year so the wee ones could have some grandparent time. To make these adventures easier on us, we bought or borrowed a few duplicate pieces of essential baby gear to leave at their place for these visits.

Among these items was a highchair.

Was it some trendy French designed/German engineered model featuring space-age alloy plating and titanium trimmings?

Did it have 64 height settings and 37 reclining options?

Was it turbocharged with solid-state, digitally fuel-injected DroppingsAlert!^TM Seating that automatically sets off warning lights and sounds to notify you when certain items find their way onto the cushions (food -- whole or partially chewed: green light, bike horn; beverage or urine: yellow light, waterfall effect; vomit or poop: brown light, 128-decibel air raid siren)?

Heck, no.

It was a Ford Administration-era, aluminum frame folding model. Its "features" included an immobile wire foot rest, vaguely padded (and extremely yellowed) vinyl cushioning and a non-negotiable, one-spot-suits-all plastic tray. It came from a family friend who found it gathering dust and cobwebs in her basement.

Best of all, it worked like a charm.

It held the kid in one spot and never tipped over.

It let food and drink reside within the kid's reach.

It cleaned up well with a hot, damp washcloth and dish-washing liquid.

A true marvel of its day and ours.

In fact, it worked just as well as the $200 model that we had back home. You know the kind. The one with nine dozen settings for seat and foot height, back recline and even tray position (high/low, close/far, Euclidean/non-Euclidean). Ours, by the way, was always kept in the popular "whatever setting I happened to first assemble it in" mode.

Yet companies keep making (and I guess somebody keeps buying) these fancy pants models that require a second mortgage to purchase and a degree in engineering to operate. That's pretty outrageous for something that at some point will be covered in slobbered puree of root vegetable and regurgitation of milk.

I don't recommend you troll the local junkyard looking for something that might give your child tetanus. Instead, I ask you to follow that well-worm mantra put forth by the American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau: "Simply chill on the bells and whistles because it's a frickin' place to put your kid's ass when the little snot eats ye olde strained parsnips and mutton mush."

First choice for me would be telephone books and duct tape. This may prove impractical these days since  most folks just look up phone numbers online and, for all their good, laptops aren't stable enough, especially if they are still running Vista. Ewww.

Instead, once baby is able to sit and hold their head upright with ease, purchase a good plastic booster seat that can be secured to the chair your kid would normally sit in. It should have a tray to hold stuff and some sort of restraint system so baby doesn't spill over like his or her slurry of "turkey rice dinner" from a jar inevitably will. These seats are lightweight, easy to move and wipe down, and generally cost around $30.

If you want to get crazy with this basic model, you can also purchase an automatic child's chair cleaning unit. We got ours from a kennel in Pennsylvania.

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Previous episodes of Baby Unneccesities:

• The Diaper Genie