To think most parents don't know that rearfacing DCs is safer?

[mumaw]

I'm in Facebook groups that specialise in advice for mainly extended rear facing car seats. It's proven that rear facing your child is much, much safer (in fact 500% safer) than front facing.

But I never see anybody RF'ing their child and don't know anybody that does either.

Is it just a case of parents not knowing that its safer?

We rear face because we have to where we live, we will switch to front facing when she is big enough which will probably be at 8 months m.
8 months please tell me that’s a typo! That she incredibly dangerous. An 8 month old us absolutely not big enough ever!

I think the point that OP is trying to make is that (partially due to the laws on being able to ff at an early age) some parents are not aware of the safety benefits of rf for longer.

I agree with those saying there are particular circumstances eg car sickness and trying to escape car seats that make parents change from rf to ff, and yes that is a judgement call parents need to make.

But I have met a lot of people that just assume that once they have outgrown the infant carrier you get a new car seat and they go ff because that's what people do/mothercare say is ok, with no proper consideration of continuing to rf.

@CTRLALTDELETED I've seen lots of DCs cross their legs or stretch their legs out towards them on the backseat. With most isofix you can adjust how far out/in the car seat is to make space for long legs

I think a lot of people know but just have the it won’t happen to mentality so don’t do it. Ds1 rearfaced till nearly 4, ds2 till nearly 3 (much bigger child and I couldn’t physically get him out at 9 months pregnant anymore nor did he fit in the seat anymore) and ds3 will read face till at least 3.5 years old.

How do you know how good those solutions are? You've never tried them!

We've tried lots of solutions (mirror, removed the head rest, tried two different seats, lots of toys and books in and around the seat for him to have) and I'm still not willing to do another long journey with him facing backwards because he is showing so clearly that he wants to look at the front.

I think you're probably working for one of the firms trying to sell more of the more expensive rear facing seats for older children.

Thankfully serious surgery injuries involving small children in car seats are very rare. Our hospitals are not full of kids in RTAs. Modern cars are so much safer overall than they used to be. The risk maybe reduced with RF - from very very rare to even rarer.

Pushing your pushchair across the road is far more dangerous

@aliolilover summed it up in one

I know its safer, but ds would literally scream blue murder rear facing (And we stuck to it until he was about 18 months I think) so its either we forward face or we don't go in the car...

@oldwhyno I'm definitely not! I work in financial services. You will see this on my other threads.

It's just that not everyone seeks to remove every aspect of risk from their life. Some people just don't think like that

YANBU to say that a lot of people don't actually know that it's safer or what the actual rules are. There's a lot of ignorance around car seats in general, not helped by wishy washy legislation and poorly trained staff at major retailers.

Just a big an issue are those awful Team Tex seats that scrape through the bare minimum of testing but are sold everywhere in horrible designs. I think a lot of people don't know that the bare minimum testing standards are actually quite low and not all seats perform equally. They assume that every car seat is as safe as the next. This is not true. Please just do your research and don't just buy the cheapest seat in Mothercare.

And FWIW, if I wasn't a MNer reading the parenting forums frequently, I probably wouldn't have known the big deal about rf and would have gone from infant carrier to ff. So I'm not trying to sound superior or sanctimonious, the information just isn't widely known to a lot of people,

@Celebelly Yes, I've seen those. My mum sent me a link to one as a suggestion for when DS outgrows his infant carrier. I cringed a little bit!

Again, since you have such a tiny baby you may not have learned this yet, so:

Not everyone will make the same decisions as you about parenting. It doesn't mean they're stupid, ignorant, or that they love their child less than you love yours. It means that they've made a different decision, that's all. You don't have to approve but nor do you need to comment (and be particularly wary of judging the parenting of those with older children, as what you are sure you will do and what you actually find yourself doing are not always the same...)

the bare minimum testing standards are actually quite low and not all seats perform equally

The insistence on testing RF'ing seats FF doesn't help the issue either as some of them appear to have appalling safety scores, and it really takes digging around to work out what is what.

@lyralalala Yes, exactly! It can take a lot of digging and research to actually work out what's going on. Now I love that kind of thing as I'm a research maniac, but it's not helpful for the public at large.

I think it's much safer for the driver to have a happy FF child than a RF one that screams the entire time.

It's all well and good saying "RF is safer!" but surely it's only safer if your child is happy that way and not screaming or being sick every time you put them in the car?

Drivers need to be able to concentrate and focus on the road - you can't do that when you have a child screaming and crying in your ear.

Not a new mother 6 year old and nearly three year old. 6 year old is tallest in year. Only turned to ff at 4. 3 year old is still rear facing. Partner is 6ft 4. Both kids get travel sick. Youngest doesn't like facing the back and would rather turn round, was getting arms out so straps were tightened. Cost more so I saved for the seat. All irrelevant excuses. Rf is far safer, people make bad decisions because it isn't law yet like in some other countries. It should be and it will be eventually.

I think you ABU tying a breastfeeding comment into your surprise that THOSE mothers aren’t using RF.

Is there any reason why formula fed babies would be more likely to FF?!

I wanted to breastfeed but physically couldn’t. It made me very very sad at the time (though my DS is thriving so am now not sad). You sound very judgy.

My DS FF from his Group 1 seat, as RF seats hadn't been brought in at that point. I wonder if some choose to FF the younger sibling as they already have the car seat from their older child.

I think RF car seats for older children came in when he was about 2, but I can't say I heard much about it at the time. Only really came across it via one work colleague seeing it in her car. I'd already paid a lot of money for a 123+ car seat, so didn't want to buy another car seat at that point.

@Celebelly it’s really not.

Also the likes of Morhercare don’t help by pretending their staff are some kind of experts. We went to the In Car Safety Centre to test a different seat when DS was outgrowing his seat and discovered that his seat had been incorrectly fitted for months.

Aaaah the faux-wide-eyed innocence of not being able to understand why someone makes a different parenting decision to you when you really want to claim moral superiority over them.

Wait till you get onto the age of parents deciding their kids are done with high back boosters by about the age of 6 and then you can really get frothing OP.

Surely as the child gets older, like age 4, they wont be able to read face, as they grow and no room for their legs to go?

@burntpinky Who mentioned breastfeeding?