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?

At 10 we are just out of boosters BUT I always check children getting in my car and check with their parents what they are happy with and also that when they are belted up that the belt is not on their neck and the child is aware why. It is so important to make sure kids travel safely. I am sure in years to come given the state of some people's driving in this country we will all be seated in individual survival pods...

As the driver of the car, I do not care what the other parent thinks. My car, my rules and I obey the law. You want a lift for your child...my way or not at all.

I value safety over peer pressure. Mine will be kept safe for as long as possible no matter what other people say or do.

Why would you put your child in danger because someone laughs at you/their car seat? People can laugh long and hard, I give no fucks.

My near 8 year old DS has just this week gone to a backless booster at 135cm - simply as he is too heavy for it. He is still on a low booster though.

DS1 will be ten in august and is 145cm, he's still on a low booster but probably only until his birthday tbh, as he's simply getting too tall.

I couldn't believe how obsessed people are with car seats when I became a parent. It's a real thing. I just spoke to the woman in john Lewis and got the best one fitted. I know people who spend time lecturing others, watching test crash dummy videos on you tube and reading reviews from all over the world. It's mad. None of them ever considered doing anything to improve their driving skills mind you.

The UK is one of, if not the, safest place to drive in the world. Germany has many more accidents so wouldn't worry too much about what they do with their car seats

My dd was 8 when she passed 135cms, she used a booster seat till mid 9.

I couldn't believe how obsessed people are with car seats when I became a parent. It's a real thing. I just spoke to the woman in john Lewis and got the best one fitted. I know people who spend time lecturing others, watching test crash dummy videos on you tube and reading reviews from all over the world. It's mad

Evidently Adeles

JL (or Halfords) all the way

Halfords are pretty useless. We bought all of our car seats from the In Car Safety Centre in Milton Keynes.

Mine were all using booster seats until around the end of primary school.

DD2 has always been the tallest of all of them. She was about 1m 50cms by the time she finished primary school, and before the end if year 7 was noticeably taller than me.

These days I would say that car seatbelts fit her much better than they often fit me.

I sometimes think that I could do with one of those contraptions that can adjust the fit of the seatbelt, as many cars it regularly sits on my neck. Irritating, and I have always presumed not especially safe.

If anyone has any recommendations for anything like that then I would be interested.

My12 year old wears size medium men's clothes. He hasn't used a car seat since he was about 8.

I don't have my own children yet, so have no real frame of reference for this, being a 90s child on backless boosters. I had no idea the guidelines were that height/age, I just thought people had become a bit obsessed with car seats in recent years. And I have privately thought that my SIL was being a bit OTT by having my eight-year-old nephew still in this massive armchair-looking thing in the back of her car!

It's intersting to read about the safety surrounding car seats. I must admit, I had just naively thought that I would like to get any future children of mine out of them as soon as I thought them old enough (judging by my own childhood), as I just think they look so cumbersome. And also really bloody dirty a lot of the time! Every day's a school day.

However, I teach Year 7, and I'm having a difficult time imagining many of mine being cool with using a high-backed booster seat now. Or actually fitting in one, aside from a very petite girl in one of my classes. I have genuinely never seen an older child in a high-backed booster, how do you get them to fit in your cars?!

Why wouldn't you want to stick to it every time? Safety first surely.
And you can't compare us travelling 40 years ago, back then a lot of us were at home with sahm, so no commuting. Now children get dropped off at a young age to day care, often travelling on dual carriage ways etc.
Ours will be rear facing for as long as possible. It's a weird trophy amongst some parents to forward face at 8 months.
Will be using a high backed booster as long as possible.

But if you think its OTT OP, then good on you for not following something easy which will prevent injury in someone common, aka a road collision.
Just move the seat between your car and grandparents. If you both do a journey a day, and you can afford it, then buy a second.

My10 yr old is still in a high backed booster for long journeys but doesn't have on when tootling about.

I'd rather he had the extra protection if we had a high speed crash.

YABVU

This thread reminds me of the debacle when a friend became a parent nearly 20 years later than I did and baffled me with the weird new approach to making up bottles.

Which she then explained and I understood.

BUT I then made the mistake of saying that making up a bottle half an hour ahead of time couldn't hurt and had three women looking at me like I was an irresponsible loon who had clearly only grown DC to adulthood by sheer dumb luck

I find the crash test videos quite mesmerising because they are always in slow motion. Somehow morbidly fascinating as well. Yes, you hope you'll never need it. But we were on a budget and I didn't want to just wander into a shop and buy one, I wanted to find the best one we could get for the money, which means buying online, which means research.

Just read a table in Which? Bertie, you morbid sod.

As for grandparents, lifts, friends' kids etc, it's really no trouble to buy a spare booster cushion or two. The cheapest ones are about £6. They are lightweight, take up barely any room in the boot, they don't have impact absorbing foam so can be chucked around without worrying about them being damaged. Yes you need a proper car seat for the first 4 years but that's expected anyway. After 5 or 6 a booster cushion is perfectly fine as a spare.

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'm confused by your question, if you accept that carseats or booster seats are needed for younger children, wouldn't grandparents and other parents who 'regularly drop DCs off' already have them from when the 11 year old was younger? Rental companies have to have them for cars rented to parents of younger children. You can hardly think it's reasonable to have say, a 5 year old without a booster seat (it would be very dangerous) - you just don't bother throwing it out once they "get too old" for it.

It's not many children who'll still need one by 12, as others have said, by 8 most will have reached the high levels needed to use just the adult seatbelt. For usually short DCs, it really doesn't cost more or cause more hassle to keep the seat in the car rather than fling it when their friends stop needing them...

But I'm cheap and don't want to pay for the subscription

There was a family locally whose ten year old was killed by an airbag in a low speed crash, she was five or six inces above the height minimum. Airbags can still be a danger when you are below five foot and seat belts don't restrain you as effectively. My kids climb, play contact sports, go mountain biking but they stay in their boosters until five foot ish because I am uncomfortable with being safer than they are in the rare case of an accident.

My 11 year old asked for the booster when we drove to France this Summer as he is more comy in it. Am more bothered by all the tinies bouncing round with no seats.

DD has a backpack booster seat that is easy to take around when needed. It's also useful as an actual backpack so she can stick her book and a snack in it if needed. It wasn't massively expensive and while it's not as good as a highback booster, it's certainly better than nothing for a short and weedy child.

As others have said, average age is 8/9 to be out of car booster seats by height anyway.

One of my dc (9yrs old now and 119cm) is very likely to be 12 when he doesn't need one by height. And we'll keep him in it til then, even though we have a minibus and that's safer anyway (car seat law didn't used to apply to minibuses, I don't know if they still don't or not, don't care either, they have a carseat). My older dc were all about 9/10 when they were the right height not to need one.

Having grown up with the carseat laws, my dc don't comment on it.

My ds was in a 5 point harness until he was 7 yrs old....we wanted him safe - so we got it shipped from the USA where its normal to keep them in a 5 point harness until much later - it fits up to age 12!

My 10 year old is only 130cm so is still in a high back booster, and has never once complained or compared himself to his peers - my car my rules :)

I do find it shocking how many kids though ride without a car seat, my 8 yr old ds has lots of classmates who seem to ride with no booster

Its also shocking how many friends toddlers seem to be in a booster seat, when i asked a friend recently why her tiny 3 yr old dd was out of her harnessed seat the answer was 'because her cousin is in a booster she wanted one too' = the mind boggles!