To put my daughter in a forward facing car seat before she's 15 months?

[LoveItWhenYouCall]

So my daughter will be 15 months at the end of this month. A few days before she is "officially" 15 months, we will be doing a long distance car journey (around 9 hours). We will be staying at the location for 3 weeks and then be doing the long journey home.

She only just fits her current car seat and really needs to be moving into the bigger one but it's forward facing.

What should I do? Should I squeeze her into her smaller car seat and have her use that the full 3 weeks we are away and then for the journey back down? Or should I just put her in the more comfortable seat as she'll turn 15 months 3 days after we arrive?

Please help!

Projecting! it does look uncomfortable! That's not projecting it's an opinion!

pickles that made me laugh!

This thread is an excellent example for the currently going 'well I did it like that and they were OK!' thread - of course they were OK, except for the ones that weren't. 14 months and 10 kilos is tiny to turn around.

OP

If you did wish to change car seats may I suggest the Britax Romer?

It's something insane like RF for Group 0,1 and 2 which i think equates to approx 3years old.

Personally I wouldn't FF with a 15 month old but we had to do it when DD wasn't much older than that north of Inverness when the dimwit car hire place had no alternatives.

They can't be that dangerous it even says from 9months on the NHS website!

The five times faced stat comes from manufacturers doesn't it? Specifically Volvo? I agree rear facing is 'safer' but that doesn't mean front facing is unsafe and there are so many variables - speed of accident, aspect of accident, cars or other vehicles involved. It's really not as simple as rear facing = safe, front facing = neglect.

I would just look at your child and use common sense op. You are putting her in a car seat and driving her in a car on normal roads in England not a rally drive on the nurburgring.

I know someone who doesn't use any car seat for her kids and they just climb around the back. My judgy pants were up to my ears. Front facing would be an improvement there!

Here's the British Medical Journal's take on it - the authors aren't linked in any way to car seat manufacturers. For those who don't want to click the link, they advised it until the age of 4. And this advice has been available since 2009.

www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b1994

The UK is very behind the times when it comes to car seat safety which is why not everyone is as informed as they should be.

When we had our first, 5 years ago, we had a lot of anger from friends and family for having her RF until nearly 4yo. People took it as an attack on their decisions even though we actively went out of our way not to discuss it, or if we did we would just say "It's what we've decided to do after looking around". In general I research everything to within an inch of its life. My friends do not so perhaps this is the difference to why some people don't know? Imo the information is really only there if you look for it, or if you talk to other people who have them. How would you know otherwise?

When we first got one people actually accused us of being neglectful making her sit RF. It's clear that a FF car seat is going to be safer than no car seat so try not to worry too much. What about if you keep her in the RF for as long as you can and then save up for a RF one, selling the FF to help pay for it....if you want to of course?

Threenme whilst I love our NHS, they are very behind with research on safety when it come to children, babies and pregnancy. Plus it's the law.

The "mine were fine" argument is all very well BUT remember, that in the 70s when I grew up we didn't have car seats for children and many cars didn't even have a seat belt in the back. Babies were often laid in a cot base on the back seat or held in mum's arms. And yes, we (ie me and my siblings/cousins) were fine, but we still wouldn't advocate it now, would we?

Huh? Now rf till 4 is the law?

A said before, my 4y nephew sits rear facing. He just has his legs either bent or crossed. He doesn't find it in the least bit uncomfortable. Children are way more flexible than adults, so sitting crossed legs is a normal way of sitting for most young children.

Lostbeyond - not the law in the UK, but advised

Hmm. Just googled some pics of 4yos rfing. There's no way I could fit my son behind me and I'd be limited to front seat passengers that had no legs with his seat where it is now.

Katharina I dont know about you, but if I thought there was a reasonable likelyhood of my children being in a serious rta I wouldn't put them in a car. Lots of things we do with our children carry a small risk, many a higher risk than having a front facing car seat.

No, the current law is that all children have to use a car seat until they are 12/135cm, that is appropriate for their height and weight.

Isize seats (not all seats are isize) must be rear facing by law until 15 months.

In the US you have to rear face until 2 by law, Europe varies (many countries are now 4)

lost no, it's law until 9 months if in a group 0/0+ seat or 15months if in an isize seat.

But it is 500% safer to rear face until 4 years.

UK law: www.gov.uk/child-car-seats-the-rules/using-a-child-car-seat-or-booster-seat

Rear Facing to 15 months if an i-Size seat (based on height), or 9kg if weight based. Thats the minimum.

I quote from that well-known corporate shill source, Which?:
"In Scandinavia, rear-facing car seats have been used for a long time. Accident statistics show that child fatalities in car crashes there are rare. In the UK, infant fatalities in car crashes are low, but there is a marked increase in the number of deaths after the age of one, when children are usually transferred to forward-facing car seats."

In other words, it's hard to be definitive based on the available data, but the patterns suggest that rear facing children between 1 and 4 saves lives. Road accident fatalities of children in Sweden, where children routinely rear face up to 6 or so, are very rare; the same is sadly not true here.

As for "if FF at a year was so unsafe the government wouldn't allow it"; well, that's stupid. Not allowing it is exactly the direction in which the government is moving, with the introduction of the i-size laws and the increasing encouragement of RF to 4. However, they have to grapple with both corporate interests and the long time it takes to change law, behaviour, supply chains etc so by necessity they are moving slowly.

Everyone decides their own priorities on this: for me, it was simple. I'm not in control of whether I have a serious accident; an ERF seat could make the difference between my child living or dying. Sold.

loveit Unless the tops of her ears are above the top edge of the car seat then leave her in that one for as long as possible.

I've had lots of industry training on this, watched lots of videos and seen lots of demos etc at trade fairs. My ds (2) is ERF at the moment and will stay that way until he's 4.

It's safer because of the weight ratio of head vs body and the pressure that puts on the neck in a crash. Something that doesn't necessarily change just because a child is big for its age etc...

Orangebird - the back seat room for lots of smaller UK cars are an issue, and does make the front passenger seat cramped in some models, when using an ERF seat. You have to take that into account when making the decisions of car buying and car seat buying I guess.

Barbarian according to this logic, why use car seats (and seat belts) at all?

barbarian your lifetime risk of dying in a car accident is 1 in 640, being killed by fire is 1 in 1500. I bet you have working smoke alarms to reduce that risk?