To think car seats until 12 is a bit OTT?

[ConvenientTruth]

I just looked up the actual law on car seats. Here it is: www.gov.uk/child-car-seats-the-rules/using-a-child-car-seat-or-booster-seat

Apparently children have to use car seats until the age of 12.

Am I alone in thinking this is a bit ridiculous? Parents of 11.5 year olds, do you all truly honestly still use a car seat?

If your kid is getting bullied, you deal with that. You don't deal with it by risking burst internal organs in a crash.

you may be an excellent driver, but the person who rams your car from the rear is the issue.

Yes mine outgrew theirs at the age of 9 (8 in one case), Bomb. I'm guessing that's average (ish).

But tall and average height DC WON'T be the ones embarassed to be the last using boosters, will they?

www.childcarseats.org.uk

Recommends children stay in boosters until 150cm tall.

I can't see why anyone would be embarrassed but a car seat. I'm an adult but would happily use one if too small.

My son is 10 and 143cm tall. He still has a booster seat (it is a backless one, but he's in the middle seat of the back of the car, so not at risk of any direct impact if a car should hit the side of ours. The only reason he's not in a high backed booster is not height - he still fits our two Britax high backed boosters fine height-wise - but the length of his thigh bones! On a high backed booster the seat finishes half way along his thighs so his legs are uncomfortable).

Anyway, it's not an automatic thing that as soon as your child hits 135cm you can ditch the car seat. Here is some info on when it's safe for a child to stop using a booster seat, and details of the 5-step test they need to pass www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.473141982829656.1073741888.282362311907625&type=3

I don't believe you determine safety just by measuring height, special.

The type of car seat you have will affect the 'do they fit a normal seat or seatbelt safely yet' calculation just as much as 2cm growth spurt would.

135cm or 12 is a very blunt pair of cut-offs based on averages and gives no protection to teenagers shorter than 135, for instance.

There are elements f arbitrariness and judgement involved.

It's easy enough to get a booster seat for your own car but it means that the grandparents, other parents who regularly drop DC off, rentals etc have to have boosters for the first 12 years of life... do people really stick to this every single time?

I honestly don't get why you'd rush to get out of a HBB. DS is 11.6 and over 135 cm, but still visibly better positioned and safer with his HBB than without it. I'm actually a bit of a road safety stats nerd, so I'm not particularly paranoid, because I know that the risks involved are pretty tiny in the UK (as opposed to anywhere else except Scandinavia). Even so: I've already forked out the money; the seat's already in the car; it's comfier; it's safer. Even if the additional risk is tiny, why would I want go out of my way to take it?

TBF we don't do the school run by car and teasing by twatty peers would never be a factor.

My daughter was teased by school friends aged 8 and quite petite for being in a HBB. At 9 she's not much above 120cm I think. I usually try to avoid setting her up to be teased but on this one I told her exactly why she is in a seat, that it is the law and she is lucky that she has good parents who actually care for her safety. She agreed and that was that. And if what I said gets repeated verbatim, good!

There are thousands of things an adult would cheerfully do that would be social death to a Yr 7 Art. That's not much of an argument

fidel I specified 10 and 11 year olds, (who by definition would be sensitive about it if they will still under 135 at that age).

My DD is 11.5 and still under 135. She is not sensitive about her height. She embraces her petiteness, and we have brought her up to be positive about it.

This is the seat my 5 year old currently has, with a 9 year old, 132cm, 32kg child in it.

do people really stick to this every single time?

Errr, well I have this weird thing about wanting to ensure my child's safety, so yes I stick to this every single time.

at secondary school kids in booster seats .... do you seriously think this is ok!!

DS2 was in his car seat until the end of Y7. He didn't need to be, he would have been 145 cm and the only reason we took it out was DS1 couldn't fit comfortably between two car seats on a long journey.

Nobody ever said anything to him about it, and when DD started complaining about still having hers in Y6 in case someone said she was a baby, although no one had (she's 140cm) DS2 told her if people were her friends they wouldn't be horrible to her about it. I have however stopped using it for short journeys, but not motorways.

When DH's grandmother was still alive I didn't like her going in the front of my car because I couldn't turn the airbag off. I think she was just about tall enough for me not to insist she used a booster seat.

Its 150cm (just under 5 ft I think - maybe 4 ft 10) or 12 here in Germany. That makes sense as that is the height at which ordinary seat belts have some chance of fitting properly rather than going across the child's neck etc. It is also a more likely age/ height correlation!

I've never seen a child who looks obviously under 150cm in a car without a booster cushion, and I know 10 and 11 year olds who still use huge high back boosters that look like arm chairs. When dropping 8yo DS1 off for 8th and 9th birthday parties we and every other invitee bring a booster cushion automatically, and some of his friends' parents drop off these enormous high backed, armed booster seats which then don't fit 3 across the back and cause logistical nightmares when trying to transport 7 people in a 7 seater to the party location... :o

DS1 is 145 cm at 8 and a few months so I guess he won't need a booster til 12, but DD still uses one at 10.5 and isn't embarrassed. A few of her friends are over 150cm but many are the same height as her.

DS1 would have been over 135cm at 6 or 7, and outgrew bog standard high backed boosters due to height and wide shoulders, and I worried about whether I should buy one of the massive hugely expensive arm chair things - but we couldn't have fitted 3 of those across the back of the car so it wasn't really an option. Certainly didn't worry about it being embarrassing and can't imagine just putting him and DD in the car without a booster cushion on visits to the UK, and automatically still put them on inflatable "bubble-bum" booster cushions in the UK last summer as the seat belts wouldn't fit properly regardless of the law saying its fine.

Fidel - really? Surely you just teach them not to bow to social pressure from anything.

Err, yes, my dcs will be in boosters until they're over 5ft. My short mother is suffering badly from seat belt damage after we were rear ended last year. The seat belt was too high on her.

These guidelines are there for a reason, why the actual fuck do people suddenly think that they know better than experts?

Sorry Teen I meant 'by definition could have...'

You've changed your question OP.

We still use a HBB in our own car (which is where the big motorway journeys are carried out) even though DS is over the legal height. But for one off trips in other cars we'll either use our spare backless booster cushion or increasingly go without. It's slightly less safe, but as I said, the increased risk is minute for a single short journey, and it's one I'm prepared to take for convenience. The thing about keeping the HBB in our own car is that it has absolutely zero cost in terms of convenience, money or comfort, so there's no compromise needed at all.

It scares me that so many still seem to see moving through car Seats as some sort of race. Ds is 6 and it amazes me how often I see his peers getting into cars with no seat at all.

The evidence is pretty clear as to why they are needed, it's a shame so many parents of older children give in to the embarrassment argument, when if people actually followed the law then it would soon become common place therefore undo any potential for embarrassment anyway

Do your children ever ride on buses? Not even a seatbelt maybe standing and holding onto a pole? I think a child will survive at that age with a seatbelt in a car.

"Fidel - really? Surely you just teach them not to bow to social pressure from anything."

Like no one thought of that ever . I'm sure they'd welcome your words of wisdom on the tweens and teens topic Art .

Sirzy I agree.

It is another form of 'my child is so advanced they ....' from toddler times.

(Also like my pet hate, people who say their 5 year old is 'too old' for toys / cbeebies / U films / whatever )

My teeny 10 year old uses one and has never once mentioned not wanting to - even though she is starting to get self-conscious about other kids developing faster than her in other ways. So I think that there isn't the stigma there used to be.