To be shocked people are actually rear-facing their primary age kids

My son turned 7 in July and has literally just turned forward facing! He's in year 3

My son turned 7 in July and we just literally started forward facing, he's in year 3

My now 21 year old DD was in a HBB until she was 13.5 when she outgrew it (she still wears 11-12 year pjs). I kept her in the HBB because she was happy to use it and she falls asleep in the car so I felt that she was safer leaning on the head wings of her HBB rather than flopping against the seatbelt.

I need this thread but for TO BE SHOCKED SO MANY PARENTS ALLOW THEIR KIDS TO RIDE SCOOTERS AND BIKES WITHOUT HELMETS.

Literally every single day I see small children without helmets on.

My kids both RF until 18kg, as that was the maximum weight one a reasonablely priced and easy to buy seat at the time. There was about a years age difference on when they reached that weight, so the skinnier one RF until a bit older. If they still fitted in the seat I wouldn't have thought to change just because they had started school, as to me those things aren't linked in the slightest.

Also, anyone who forward faces because they don’t have space to rear face…you need a 55cm survival gap between your child’s face and the seat infront of them. If you don’t have room to rear face, you don’t have room to forward face either.

I’m always pleasantly surprised when I see older children rear facing. Sadly far too many parents in the uk forward face too early.

when you can get ERF to 36kg/ 125cm we should see a lot more primary school kids rear facing.

Well OP prepare to have your mind blown. My 14.5 year old still uses a booster seat sometimes. He is tiny, only 4ft 8 and 34kg so technically still in the height and weight range of needing a car seat.
Without the booster, the seatbelt sits right across his neck risking decapitation in a car accident. His safety is our priority and he prefers it as he can see out the window better and it is more comfortable. If we are bringing his friends in the car, we remove it so he doesnt get bullied (though on one occasion I forgot and his friends fought to sit in it!).

nah… because they we’re trying my to help you. That you took that as so bizzare is on your lack of education on the topic. I’m sorry you aren’t educated, that sucks.

I was born in 1980 and spent many a long drive to Cornwall napping on the parcel shelf.

My eldest is in his 20s. People I know with my now 5 year old are shocked when they find out how young they were put in big forward facing seats two decades ago.

I turned my 4 year olds seat around just before her 4th birthday.

Someone I knew from an activity group saw me and went fucking nuts. Like you know when you want to ask someone if they need help because their reactions are so bizarre? Really over the top and then she got other members of the group to bombard me with videos of crash test dummies. I had to block the lot of them.

They were a bonkers lot in general though.

My kids were born late 80, early 90s, all had car seats the moment we bought a car. Prior to getting a car, we occasionally travelled in my GPs car. I bought tethers for DS1s carrycot and fastened that on the back seat. 🙈 Grandfathers car didn't have rear seat belts, he wasn't thrilled at me asking to screw tethers into his car but I insisted.
Getting our own car both boys were in forward facing car seats, when DD was born she had rear facing infant carrier that also clipped onto the pushchair. We swopped cars as well so all three could fit across the back seat. Rear facing beyond infants wasn't a thing. Booster seats from 4 were normal.
A relative, younger than me, put her 9 month on a booster seat as he was 'so advanced' ! 🤔🙈😂

I was born 84, my parents had a car seat for me from day 1 but from what they have told me they were very much in the minority taking that approach.

I have no memories of being in a car seat, but I do remember my Grandma sitting me on a cushion so I could see out the window!

Thankfully in the last 40 years we have learnt a lot about car seat safety.

Did you have older siblings esp with a big gap between them and you? This would be quite unusual in the 90s. In 1993 a law was passed to require all children under 3 to use a child seat, although it was still allowed for children aged 3+ to just use a seatbelt (or nothing, in the back, if one wasn't available).

OTOH I was born in the late 80s, so just short of this law, I don't remember using a child seat and only occasionally a booster seat when my grandad read an article about them and insisted on them, but we all thought he was being silly and overprotective. I know I did use a car seat as a toddler, because there's a picture of me in it, but it's before I can remember.

I don't know how much was made of this in the news etc, so it's possible if you had older siblings, your parents just did the same as they had for them, not realising the law had changed. The first ever UK law involving child seats was passed in 1989, but it was fairly pointless as it basically was only a problem if there was a child seat installed and the child in question wasn't in it. If you just didn't have one, it didn't matter.

1991 was when seatbelts had to be fitted in the back and front of all cars, I believe this included retrofitting, apart from classic cars over a certain age, but don't know the exact details any more. This would have made a big difference in the ability to fit child seats, because if you didn't have seatbelts in the back of your car, you had to bolt the seat to the seatbelt mounting point using special straps, so they couldn't easily be moved between vehicles or moved for an adult to sit there. I assume this is the reason that the law before 1993 was about using child seats only "when available" - because they were permanently installed.

I suspect we have a similar "blind spot" happening currently, because the law changed again in 2006, stating that children over 3 but under 12 or 135cm must continue to use a child seat or booster seat.

Anyone under 10/11 in 2006 (so, currently under 30) is likely to be aware of this rule, because they would remember it affecting them. So the "blind spot" will pass within the next 10-15 years as this cohort have primary school aged children.

Anyone working in the industry takes it for granted that it's obvious, because it's been the case for nearly 20 years.

But it's not obvious to someone who was already over 12 in 2006, ie, adults currently in their 30s/40s - it's much more likely that they don't remember a law change which happened 20 years ago when they themselves were in their teens or mid 20s and not thinking about children at all. They probably take it for granted that very young children need child seats, because these have been in common use throughout their entire lifetime, but the use among older children has not been consistent, and the publicity about the law change stopped years ago. Some people will look it up to be sure, but some people will simply make an assumption.

So you have quite a lot of parents of primary school aged children currently who automatically buy and use child seats for their babies and toddlers, but don't realise that they are required up to 12 years of age or 135cm, and stop using them early.

I was born in 1981 and it wasn't obligatory, my dad thought this was bonkers and engineered a seat/restraint himself for us himself.

Grew up in the 90s and didn't have one! My husband did though.

My eldest stopped rear facing recently age 7.5. I'm surprised more people don't rear face their children for as long as possible; my preference is to do the safest possible thing especially when I see maniac drivers locally. Can't understand why FF would logically be preferable (excluding edge cases like disability preventing use of a FF seat, or a child constantly being sick when RF). Car seats are there for safety reasons, after all. They aren't some kind of fashion accessory.

thank you- very interesting and informative

12/13 years ago ERF wasn't widely known at all and was only spoken about in the depths of internet forums. You had to order seats from specialist dealers and it wasn't easy to find them. Most people had no idea that larger rear facing seats even existed. They definitely weren't available in Mothercare and Halfords. There was a verrrry occasional long AIBU thread about it (which would go mostly like this one, just with younger ages and more on the "Huh?! Where do they put their legs?" side) but mostly discussion of ERF was limited to "What car seat should I get?" threads and most people didn't bother writing or looking for a thread for that, they just went to Mothercare and chose from what the salesperson suggested.

It was about 2013 I believe that the first ERF seat hit high street stores - that was the Cybex Sirona, the original had an impact shield for forward facing and 5 point harness for rear facing, and it was very expensive at the time, about £300 IIRC? Maybe even over that. Bearing in mind, a reasonable price for a seat back then was about £60-120, and the expensive ones (like Maxi Cosi Axiss, which was FF only but the first "spin" seat, turned to the side) were about £150. 2013 was also the launch of the new i-size regulation, which also started a wider conversation about the safety benefits of ERF since one of the rules was RF up to a minimum of 15 months.

MN RAVED about the Axiss BTW - it was all anyone wanted from about 2010-2013 or so. Isofix was also marketed very heavily as this big new safety innovation if you had it in your car, which a lot of people didn't, so the fact that a lot of the ERF seats (if you had even heard of them, which most people hadn't) were belt fitted really put a lot of safety-conscious people off. There were isofix ERF seats, like the Klippan KISS, and the Axkid Kidzofix, but those weren't well known and again, they were expensive. That's why the Sirona, and the Britax Dualfix, which followed shortly after, were revolutionary.

I am fairly certain John Lewis never stocked the Two Way Elite but they almost definitely would have had the Britax First Class, which was a two-way seat but only 13kg RF, then 18kg FF.

Joie had released some seats in 2013 but I think they were only really sold through Toys R Us initially. So ERF started to become more well known because of the sudden availability of these spin, ERF, isofix seats sold in major high street chains. But still they were totally premium seats, most people didn't touch them because they were too expensive or because Maxi Cosi were by far the most popular infant seat, if they'd "invested into" the Maxi Cosi system they just automatically went for the Pearl seat for the next stage, the 2Way Pearl came a bit later as well. I remember a lot of discussion and argument about ERF at this point, as well as impact shields being touted as an alternative - that was what I went for for my son in the end, because it was that much more affordable and portable to me as a non-driver.

Once Joie seats hit a wider market, this made a huge difference again as they were affordable. The Stages was indeed the first model they brought out and it just about fitted into that "reasonable" price bracket, they later had two models under £100. I honestly think this did a huge amount for ERF visibility and availability. Then the Joie 360 Spin (which I have listed as 2016) really transformed the market in itself. Spin seats were already popular but this made them affordable too. Suddenly everyone had one, and that is why I would put 2016 as the tipping point.

Yep, we always sit rear facing on a train.

If it had been an option when mine were that age, they would have been rear-facing until they were too big for their car seats. My late DF was a physicist who understood forces and advocated that every passenger should travel on every form of transport rear facing. He always rear faced on trains and I do too.

My now 21 year old has always been tiny (she still fits 11-12 age pyjamas) and I remember when she was 13 months old a friend questioned me, because of her age, why I still had her in the baby car seat; she still fitted it and her now 24 year old sister still fitted the next seat so I wasn't rushing to force her sister into a HBB (the overlap in the toddler seat would have been too small to justify buying a second seat unnecessarily).
They were both still in HBBs when they started high school (the first version of the Britax Hi-Liner/Adventure) and the younger one finally outgrew it at 13.5.

A friend whose DS is now 16 used an ERF until he was 4 or 5 and I know someone who has her 3 year old in an ERF seat in both her car and her DM's.

Shockling that people put safety first?? Really?
Child of 7 is happy in a rear facing seat (he is the size of an average 4 year old). Suspect he will be in a rear facing for another two years at least....
Hopefully he will be out by secondary.
Safety is paramount.

Ours rear faced until they were 5, they were both small for their age. We bought the Cybex Sirona in 2015 when our eldest was born, and I'm pretty sure it was the only extended rear facing in Mothercare at the time. It gave us peace of mind and the kids weren't bothered, it was the norm for them. Other than my DM constantly harping on squashed legs we had no issues at all.

I'm more concerned about the huge amount of little ones sitting in the front and/or without booster seats on the school run. Ours will be in high backed boosters for as long as we can get away with it, the road to school is lethal.

The first one was on the high street was the Joie Stages in 2014. I think JL had the the Britax 2 way elite before then.

I hadvto go to several shops for the Joie seat when my baby carrier broke and DD2 was a year old but only 8kg.
Mothercare insisted she had to be FF as she was a year old.
Halford however were brilliant. Got the issue immediately... a 1yo didn't need a baby seat but she was also too small for FF.

Thanks, interesting. There were definitely no rear facing seats that I noticed in the main shops in my day (2012)!