Family wear helmets in solidarity with four-month old baby with flat head syndrome

A photograph of the family went viral on Saturday

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A four-month-old baby diagnosed with a severe case of plagiocephaly has inspired his entire family to wear helmets in solidarity with him.

Jonas Gutierrez developed the flat head syndrome – whereby the skull plates have fused incorrectly – after he was born with an oversized head that led him to sleep on the same spot.

“He was constantly sleeping on it so it just kept getting worse," father Gary Gutierrez told ABC News.

Doctors fitted the Texan baby with a helmet to reshape his head which he’s required to wear for three to six months.

When Jonas returned home – helmet in tow – his three-year-old sister decided she wanted to wear her bicycle helmet so that he wouldn’t feel alone with his condition.

"She's like, 'Hey! I have a 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."

A photograph of the entire family decked out in their helmets went viral on Saturday after their cousin, writer Shea Serrano, tweeted it to 152,000 followers.

The photo received 20,000 re-tweets and 81,000 likes.

Positional plagiocephaly reportedly affects around half of all babies under a year old in varying degrees, with prematurely-born children being the most at risk.

It is an entirely aesthetic condition, with no significant medical consequences and can usually be solved fairly quickly if treated early on when a baby’s skull is not yet fully formed and therefore can be reshaped.

It can occur while the baby is developing in womb or can happen after he or she is born if, like Jonas, they are sleeping in the same position every night and subsequent pressure causes the head to appear flattened.