To tell my parents they can't take my daughter out if they forward face her

[IdiotSandwich05]

Would I be unreasonable to tell my parents they can't take my daughter out if they're going to forward face her?

This is NOT meant to turn into a debate about car seats and rear-facing vs forward-facing.

So my daughter is 3.5 and been rear facing since birth and still is. Her rear facing car seat goes up to 25kg and she's only 14kg so I plan on keeping her in it for the foreseeable. My parents have mentioned forward facing her loads of times, (since she was about 18 months!), but it's happening a lot more often recently. They keep saying they're going to buy her a booster seat, I asked why and what's wrong with the car seat we got them and they say her legs are too long and she looks uncomfortable in it 🙄 they also mention that she's quite badly car sick and forward facing would help it. She DOES get car sick but I'm not sure wether FF would do anything and tbh I'd rather she was sick but was safer than not sick but less safe!

They even say they know it's safer to RF! Yet are still constantly mentioning FF 🙄 When I try and show them studies, car seat safety tests, even news articles ect they just laugh and tell me to stop Googling stuff and they did it with me and I survived blah blah. Really bloody frustrating.

Well it came to a head the other day and I lost my temper and flat out told them she was going to continue RF and if they couldn't respect that they weren't taking her out in their car. They can still see her of course, just not actually take her anywhere in the car if they're going to FF.

Well my mum has now called me ridiculous and isn't talking to me 🙄 she says I'm 'over the top' with safety and need to relax a bit! I think SHE'S being ridiculous but I don't know if I was a little harsh?

I should say that this isn't the first time we've argued over safety or lack of it! One time they watched her when she was 8 months old, and when I came to collect her she was asleep in a travel cot with a pillow! I told them this wasn't safe and again got the 'we did it when you were a baby' ect. But they did remove it.

I'm sure this is an argument a lot of us have with our parents. But was I too harsh for saying this?

Of course you are right.
I am shocked to see people are STILL poorly educated on dangers of FF at an early age. And 3.5 IS an early age.

Can you not talk to your child without eye contact? In that instance I'd suggest a crash isn't that unlikely...

I think it's time for FF but as many others have said, your child, your rules.

However, personally, I think she's missing out on other things. I live rurally, so we often chatted about things we saw and it was a great learning opportunity. My daughter can identify many kinds of birds of prey just from our car journeys. We chat about how the fields are changing, what the farmer is planting etc. My daughter is a great fan of asking questions in the car and we always end up discussing what she can see. At the moment, 'what does that road sign mean?' is a favourite one. 'What are those rocks made of?' Was another one. Oh, and 'How are hills made?' (I've no idea....)

It makes the journey go quicker and it will help travel sickness. However, as loads of people have said- you and OH need to make your own decisions and family need to respect them.

My eldest was a v. prem baby, so in theory, I could have kept her RF until she was in school!!😉

The tests are very frightening (and FWIW I ERF) but children are not crash test dummies and when a child has a condition like travel sickness you have to revise your risk assessment. I agree with the many pp who have gently tried to explain to PP that in mitigating against one risk she may exacerbate another. Sadly there’s no arguing with dogma and she doesn’t want to hear it. I’m not sure what she does want tbh.

🙋‍♀️ me! I said you were torturing her. Prolonged nausea caused by travelling backwards is intense and torturous. When you are trapped in a situation, slightly reclined in her case and unable to adjust her position to alleviate the utterly appalling sensation of nausea, that is cruel. I totally stand by what I said. And seeing as my comment wasn’t deleted, it seems MNHQ is ok with it, also.

I’m not making light of children being abused by saying that either, don’t be absurd. But this is something you can alleviate, or at least attempt to alleviate by turning her round.

With regards to the risk of aspiration of vomit, the risk of that, especially if she’s upset, is going to be far greater than the risk of being in a high speed collision, especially due to the slightly reclined position of car seats. Surely you can see that?

I’m not mocking your vehement approach to safety, but I do think, in light of your daughter’s suffering on each and every car journey, considering FF is reasonable.

Tell your parents they can't take your daughter out. Lovely that they offer.

If we’re going to be pedantic, at no point did I say you were an abusive parent.

You're right, it's fine. RF is safer

I feel sorry for a 3.5yr old having to rear face, especially as its making her car sick. YABU

Car seats in the UK are not a case of them all being as safe as each other, cheaper ones pass much less stringent safety tests and are crash tested at much lower speeds, so yes, cheaper ones are generally way less safe in the UK.

At what age do you plan on letting your daughter FF?
I think you are way over the top. The child is completely safe in a forward facing car seat. If the car flips it will make no difference either way will it? If she wasn’t secure in any car seat then you could have concerns, in my opinion you are being paranoid
If the grandparents can’t see if she’s vomiting that would be more dangerous. She probably car sick because she’s got nothing to look at apart from flashing scenery and the backseat. How boring for her

You should be grateful your parents love and care for your daughter

How often & how far do they drive her?

Have you even tried to see if ff prevents the car sickness?

On the whole would say that it's your decision.

The travel sickness does skew things though.

It is only a problem if they have a collision isn't it?

I do all that with my DD. Rearfacing doesn't remove their eyes.

Now and again for long journeys, yes it is. Where did I say "dose her up?"

This forum is so bizarre, so many angry people.

It's not an argument I would have had.

I said this earlier but from the In-car Safety Centre:

Won’t my child get bored being rearward facing?
In our experience, the opposite is true! In a forward-facing car seat, all children can see is the back of the front seat with a limited view of the side window. In a rear-facing car seat, the child has a great view out of the side and rear windows.

My DD can see out both side windows and the entire back window. Way more she would see than FF.

OP I was fully in agreement with you until I saw your DD’s age. I think by 3.5 it’s not really a stop them taking her out issue, I RF’d my DS until 4.5 but from 3.5 onwards I accepted that if he wasn’t in my car he might be FF. mainly because my IL’s car is a hell of a lot smaller than mine and I could see he was genuinely uncomfortable and upset when in it. What sort of journeys do they take DD on?

Rearfaciñg doesn't remove their eyes. No, but feeling acutely nauseated does mean you tend not to be paying much attention to anything except feeling ill. Great if that's not a problem for your kids, unfortunately not true for the OPS dd.

I don't have kids so no skin in the game here, but I do do risk assessments daily as part of my job and it does strike me on these that people just don't have a balanced view of risk. Risk has a 'probability' and a 'severity' factor and these work in tandem with each other.

In this case I'd definitely offer up the FF option to see if it solved the sickness problem.

If it does, then realistically you have a winner, given the low probability of an accident occurring with suitable conditions, serious enough not a car park or traffic queue bump, but not so serious that your car is totalled by an out of control artic on the M6 and catapulted upside down over the central reservation before bursting into flames (deliberately extreme examples) you've removed the (highly probably albeit lower severity) risk of the sickness and associated discomfort, lasting issues with travel and damage to the car.

If it doesn't, then revert back to RF, as with all other things being equal it's the safer option, as the 'crash safety' is now the only real variable if the sickness is equal in both cases.

Often when it comes to risk assessing you need to take emotion out of it, as emotion is not rational, which is probably why you are getting all sorts of OTT / PFB / over anxious comments OP.

As for your parents, whilst it is ultimately your kid your rules, you can't force them to follow them, they could just stop seeing/taking out your DD. You have to decide if this is a hill you want to die on.

Your kid your choice. My kids were FF by then though.

l'm happy enough to help family members or friends out and look after their children for free. I get complaints and that's the end of that. You want to order them about like staff get staff and pay the staff. Your parents look after your child well for you you say thanks.

I think there’s a lot more going on here tbh. There’s a lot of anxiety it appears.

soeaking as a child who suffered from car sicknesss it is debilitating, it gave me anxiety about travelling to the point where that made me vomit too. Looking forward seeing where you’re going makes a lot of difference even if it’s jus my looking out of a side window in direction of travel - being trapped in a car feeling ill can feel like hell. it then can make you feel terrible for the rest of the day.

Car seats in the UK are not a case of them all being as safe as each other, cheaper ones pass much less stringent safety tests and are crash tested at much lower speeds, so yes, cheaper ones are generally way less safe in the UK

Really interested to know more about this @Financialsense - particularly "cheaper ones are generally way less safe" - if you can/feel like linking to anything detailed? From a quick Google it looks like both the iSize and earlier seats are tested to something like 35mph front impact and 18mph rear; key difference admittedly being that iSize seats are also tested for side impact. But expect the speeds involved in a motorway collision would make those differences a bit irrelevant?

What evidence do you have that a pre-iSize seat is way less safe than an iSize one? Am talking e.g. statistical studies looking at nature and extent of injuries sustained by children in different seats in comparable car crashes - not just the difference in test standards. Genuinely asking out of interest!

Hear hear.