To keep ds in a rear facing seat?

[Edenviolet]

Dh thinks so as ds2 (22months) fusses and cries a lot and dh thinks his legs are "squashed up".
He wants to turn the seat round so that ds can see more and might not get as upset in his car seat.

Dh said it won't make a difference and that he drives carefully but I pointed out that it might not be dh that causes an accident heaven forbid one happens and that it all depends where the impact is etc and so if rear facing is meant to be safer I want to keep ds that way.

Dh thinks I'm being over protective and has said he is concerned about ds legs being so restricted.

AIBU

DC, not DS. Might be but don't know yet!

Perhaps get a bigger rear facing seat that will last till he's 4/5? I have one and my DS loves it!

boydonewrong if he's getting his arms out first to undo himself you can buy a chest strap which should stop him being able to.

Oh thanks pocket thats exactly how he does it the bugger. I only put him in, in t shirts and tighten it.as much as i can and he still.manages it

moresnowplease

Well theoretically if you were hit at a standstill by a car doing 70mph then the force difference would be 70mph. So bad but still only half as bad as a head on collision at 70mph. And yes, in that case forward facing would I believe be an advantage.

However the odds of that happening are (to me at least) so vanishingly small that I wouldn't consider it as a factor in making a decision on car seats because as soon as my car broke down / pulled onto the hard shoulder I would get myself and all passengers out of the car to go and sit safely up the bank away from the stranded car.

Isn't this what you would do?

If someone goes into the back of you doing 70, seat direction will (literally) be the last of your worries.

We turned DS around a few months shy of 5 yrs.

You have to make sure you check the seat as sometimes they have bits to move as the child gets heavier/older to make more space.

I still worry like hell as he's still light enough to be rear-facing but I am happy that we ignored everyone else's comments and kept him rear-f for as long as we did.

YANBU

My daughter is 4 in august and still happily rear facing. It is 5 times safer and after doing some research I wouldn't have it any way. Show him 'rear facing - the way forward' website and if you can afford it maybe look into getting a more comfortable rear facing seat. My dd is in the britax two way elite, I got it posted from the Milton Keynes in car safety centre. They give great advice over phone with no obligation to buy. she has plenty of room for her legs and has never asked to face forward despite facing forward occasionally in child minders car.

I hate the way I this country it is like a race to face your child forward. stick to your guns!

The obvious answer to this would seem to be a new rear-facing car seat, in which his legs won't be squashed, Hedgehog.

To those querying 70mph rear ended crashes, please be aware that any car seat on the market only has to be tested to 30mph. Therefore any and every collision at 70mph would cause a "potential disaster"

Ds has a britax seat its not an infant carrier one but the next stage up, it can be rear facing and forward facing.
I forget the name of it and can't check as its in dh car! I think it is suitable for up to age 4 ?

It is a britax first class plus seat that ds has

It might be suitable til 4 forward facing though. Let us know the name when he gets in and we can help

Ah ok. That one is suitable rear facing til 13k. Then can turn it forward til 18k.

DS was RF until he was 4yrs 2 months but that was only because his sister needed the seat. Otherwise we would have kept him in it until he was too big (Britax TWE). Unfortunately it isn't practical to have two of these in our car as are constantly changing the driver's seat position. He is now in a Kiddy Guardian Pro, which is what we felt was preferable to being in a harnessed seat.

When ds gets to 13 kg rather than turn it forward is there another seat I could get that could stay rear facing ? is there any particular seat that is really good. I'd like to keep him rear facing if possible as he has joint/muscle problems so ideally I want him to be rear facing for as long as I can. His joints dislocate so easily so even a small jolt could hurt him and I'd rather he was as safe as he can be.

We have ds in an extended rear car seat, basically because we could afford it, our car is big enough to accommodate one, and on balance we decided it was overall more safe to travel rear facing.

However I do think some people are a little bit pious about the erf thing, and sending links to all their friends etc. They always reel off the '5 times safer' thing, but what does that even mean, how do you quantify that? And as has been discussed on this thread there are lots of different types of crashes with different risk factors which again makes the 5 times safer thing hard to quantify.

Also on that rear facing website they always compare the stats of child death in car accidents between Sweden and the uk. Well for starters the population of the uk is far higher than Sweden so of course there will be more deaths, plus the fact there are far more cars on the road in the uk and also in Sweden they tend to drive more of the big Volvo type cars.

As I said, we rear face ds still as on balance we think its safer. But I never really mention it to friends and I certainly wouldn't send loads of links to friends about it, parents can make up their own minds. Given the vast number of cars and accidents in the uk, compared to the very small number of child deaths, forward facing in a properly tested car seat that has been correctly installed (from a sensible age, not from 6 months as I have seen people do) is fine.

Yes. Id recommend the Britax Two Way Elite.

Yes you can buy bigger ERF seats. At his current weight he is too small to legally FF anyway regardless of age - the minimum weight is 9kg, there's no guarantee that the straps will contain him FF if he's under that weight.

On the leg thing, it's worth noting that children have different ideas of what is comfortable than adults do. Adults often sit on a chair/sofa etc with their legs bent at the knee, straight in front of them (or crossed) but children almost never sit like this if given a choice, they sit cross-legged on the floor, kneel on the floor, pull their legs up around them on a sofa or armchair. Often they lie down and put their legs in various positions, often higher than their head!

In rear facing seats, children will bend their legs, cross their legs, or stretch them upwards (this feels great when you're just wearing socks too ) it's actually in some cases more comfortable than them dangling off the edge with nothing to rest them on which is the case for most FF seats.

You may also find that a larger RF seat has more leg room and looks more comfortable in general than the First Class, which is really designed for RF babies.

[http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2DVfqFhseo The importance of Rearfacing]

Please watch the clip above, bear with it until the crash test videos.
(Its a lovely video, music is lovely)

LINK

We got the klippan kiss 2. It's ERF, ISO fix (but can go in with the belt. Has a removeable infant carrier with wheels and a handle (though it won't attach to a buggy). Suitable from birth to 18kg. It's got a thing (can't think if the word) so there is some foot space. Both my 14 month old and 4 year old are very happy in it. It was £340 ish pounds. Not cheap, but no more than purchasing seperate group 0 and group 1 isofix seats.