Entire Family Wears Helmets to Support Baby With Flat Head Syndrome

Alison Coldridge
·Editor, Yahoo Life UK
Baby Jonas, who suffers from flat head syndrome, is not alone in his helmet-wearing.
Baby Jonas, who suffers from flat head syndrome, is not alone in his helmet-wearing. (Photo: Facebook/Shayner Guiterrez)

A series of photos of a 4-month-old baby and his family has gone viral — thanks to the headgear the group is wearing. The Gutierrez family, from Texas, is now an Internet sensation after family members donned helmets in support of baby Jonas, whose flat head syndrome has left him needing to wear a helmet for the next three to six months.

The infant developed plagiocephaly, as the condition is medically known, after he was born with an oversize head that led him to sleep on the same spot. The condition is relatively common, affecting one in five children, and while it isn’t a major cause for concern, it does often require a specially designed helmet that helps improve the shape of the skull.

It was Jonas’s 3-year-old sister who decided the family should join Jonas in wearing a helmet. “She’s like, ‘Hey! I have a [bicycle] helmet too, and Daddy has a helmet,'” mother Shayna Gutierrez, 31, told ABC News. “So she just got excited and went and dug them all out.”

Relative Shea Serrano tweeted a photo of the family decked out in their headgear to 152,000 followers over the weekend, leading to a flurry of online support.

So far, the post has received almost 22,000 retweets and 84,200 likes.

For information about flat head syndrome and the children it is most likely to affect, visit the NHS website.

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