Child safety seats

[rootofnewt]

I'm glad to see that the AAP has revised their carseat recommendations. They now recommend that children rear-face to the maximum height/weight restrictions of their converstible car seat or a *minimum* age of two.
http://aapnews.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/30/4/12-a

Ronan is still rearfacing, of course. It's something like 5x safer. He's only 22lbs and wee, so he has a ways to go and will likely outgrow rearfacing in his Boulevard by height before weight (33lbs, it's an '07 model).

http://www.cpsafety.com/articles/stayrearfacing.aspx

Comments

[cassidyrose.livejournal.com]

Good to hear.

S. was rear-facing until almost two. We flipped him when he got too tall. He now is at the weight limit as well--our seat has a rear-facing 33lbs limit and he is between 32 and 33 lbs. These new recommendations are good news.

[inahappycrowd.livejournal.com]

Some of these regulations have me scratching my head. I keep hearing in commercials that 4'10" is the magic number that kids must reach before they can ride without a car seat. If I had done that, I wouldn't have gotten out of a car seat until high school. And a good friend of my mom's, now in her 60s, would still be riding in a car seat.

[elnigma.livejournal.com]

I agree, some of the regulations are extreme. They don't take into consideration tall for their age and skinny children. Back-faced car seats fit kids whose legs don't extend much longer than the seats.

[inahappycrowd.livejournal.com]

The funny thing about regulations is that they're there to give some hard numbers to people who apparently can't use common sense. It sort of amuses me to think about the ridiculous literal possibilities...

[elnigma.livejournal.com]

Yes - common sense would say if a child fits rear-facing car seats, that should be the preferred option. If they don't - then obviously, turn them around. If a child's big enough they don't fit booster seats, then they don't need to wear those, either, but they should stay in the back seat still until they've even larger since that's safer than in the front. Booster seats aren't designed for tall children, either. Trying to put a kid too big for the seat in one that doesn't fit is adding danger - they only are helping protect those they fit.

[elnigma.livejournal.com]

Requiring kids too large for the seats to still sit in them increases risk of injury
http://www.aafp.org/afp/20050801/473.html

[krasota.livejournal.com]

Broken legs are easier to fix than internal decapitation. If a child has long legs, but the torso is still within the height restriction of a rear-facing seat, the child is safer rear-facing. An accident with enough force to break legs rear-facing would possibly snap the spinal cord if forward facing.

Ronan rests his legs on the seat back, drapes them sideways, or turns them in somewhat cross-leg style.

[elnigma.livejournal.com]

If that's how you feel, go with it. I don't think that ill-fitting seats are safe. I think the child is safest supported properly through the shoulders and stomach area. The whole body is an issue, too. That doesn't happen when the kid is too tall for the seat - booster seats on a child too big for them are too tight around the waist so a child's stomach hurts just sitting in them and leave no support over tall shoulders increasing the chance of whiplash. And I don't think it safer to have to have their legs up in a way that they'll snap backwards in a small collision.
We can agree to disagree. Average or small size children fit the seats for a longer time, and then all is well, and they are safer in the seats as regulated.

[krasota.livejournal.com]

No, really, this is what is advised. I'm not talking about boosters, I'm talking about rearfacing in convertible seats within the weight limits (these go to 33 or 35 pounds, generally) and within the torso height limits (at least one inch of hard shell above the child's head.

It's not about what I feel, it's about what crash test videos show. Go ahead and check out some of the videos on forward facing for toddlers.

Once a child is too big for a seat, it is no longer safe. We need seats that fit children for *longer* periods in rearfacing positions and in harnessed positions. Sadly, the law is for a paltry 12mo and 20 or 22lb minimum in most states, which means that many people turn around skull-heavy infants FAR too early.

Many people think a child has outgrown rearfacing just because their legs hit the seat or just because they hit the legal minimum. If the child is not too tall in the torso and not too heavy, the seat still fits. As I said, broken legs are far less serious than severing the spinal cord.

[elnigma.livejournal.com]

It is okay for you to disagree. I don't doubt that for normal size toddlers who fit the seats that they protect them best. I also figure that the regulations are to keep people whose children fit said seats using them. Both those things are okay, if they were specific to said scenarios. I haven't seen video of crash tests showing average accident scenarios with children who don't fit the car seats. And if the kid's legs are draped up the back seat (not just crumpled in front), and the scrunching up caused by the pressure of the kid's legs against the back seat means the shoulder and waist strap doesn't fit right - I don't think they're fitting them. Average to small size children don't have these issues until the regulations' age quotas get reached.

[junni.livejournal.com]

Broken legs are easier to fix than internal decapitation.

This. *shudder* The internal decapitation thing happened to a younger sister of someone with whom I went to school. This was years ago (she was about 5 or 6), and not in any kind of carseat. She was gone in seconds, literally. I remember her mother talking about when I was older. The car wasn't even going that fast. Her daughter *should* have been fine. Scary, scary stuff.

Sometimes I think walking is the better option...

[krasota.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that there aren't actually any documented cases of leg or hip fractures from rear-facing children, but there are countless neck/spine injuries form FF children.

Fortunately, the way seats are today, I don't have to worry about Ronan's position affecting how the harness fits. I fasten and adjust his harness each time, with his butt firmly in place. It doesn't matter what his legs do. The harness can't move after that (not unless the system is faulty). He's not learned to loosen it (hard to reach, anyhow), nor could he do so without my knowing.

There's a story about internal decapitation that was posted on car-seat.org a year or so ago. Here's a blog referencing the story. The accident happened at 35mph. The child survived, but damn. It's scary.
http://allaboutcarseats.blogspot.com/2008/10/sad-story.html
and here's a thread that copied/pasted the original forum posts:
http://www.babytalkbio.com/community/index.php?topic=76019.0;topicseen

(I think the original forum is members only, so I didn't look for the links.)

I walk a lot. With the dumb-ass sidewalks and curb jumpers in this town, I'm not sure how safe it is. ;) (Just kidding.)

[krasota.livejournal.com]

It's usually an either/or thing: height OR weight OR age. So if you reach the magical age (8, 10, 11) and are only 4' 7", you be out of the seat/booster in most states. I mean, they don't retroactively require tiny adults to be in boosters.