To still use a car seat for my 10 year old?

[ExcitedButNervous0424]

My son has recently turned 10 and still uses a high backed booster.

When I mentioned this to my friend the other day, whose son is a few months younger than mine, she practically laughed and said she can’t believes I still put my 10 year old in a car seat.

My son is always asking why he still has to use one as apparently, to quote him: “none of my friends do” but it’s always been non-negotiable for me. I always thought he was exaggerating when he said that none of his friends use car seats anymore (not even backless boosters) but judging from my friend’s reaction its made me wonder whether my son is actually right.

My friend said to think about how much I must be embarrassing my son when he has to use a HBB when his friends don’t use anything, but surely car safety isn’t about just letting him do what his friends do?

What’s the norm? Because her reaction really surprised me.

@ageratum Look at the top of a high back booster seat. What do you see at either side? Head impact protection. What do you think that's going to do if there's an impact from the side?

@0ohLarLar Your high back booster seat probably extended higher but you likely didn't realise.

The general ignorance around car seat safety never ceases to amaze me. Not a dig at you OP just people in general. From infant carriers, rear facing and high backed boosters, people just don’t seem to grasp what a car seat is actually for.

OP, the legal minimum height in this country to not use a car seat is 135cm or 12 years old. It is worth bearing in mind that it’s 150cm in the rest of Europe. The children and cars are no different and our roads are no safer so I presume the Europeans just care for their children’s safety more than we do.

It’s not quite as simple as stopping at a specific age or height. The adult seat belt has to fit them correctly, over the shoulder not the neck, they have the sit with their back against the back of the seat and knees bent over the edge of the seat, the lap belt must sit over the lower pelvis not the abdomen. The fit might be different in different cars. For example, my 146cm DD aged 10 has recently stopped using the high backed boosters in my parents car but uses one in mine as the seat belt cuts into her neck in my car.

So 9 months ago I posted on here that my daughter was 131cm. She is now 136cm and age 8 and we are still in the HBB. I will be keeping her in till 150cm no matter what other people/friends etc....... say. We recently had to use a taxi in an emergency and she actually said she didn't feel safe with just the seatbelt and that the seatbelt hurt her neck. So she isn't even worried about being in the car seat and friends taking the piss.

Kids will take the piss out of all sorts, it is up to you as a parent to keep your child as safe as possible.

Not necessarily - they do top out at different heights. If their child's head was 2 inches over the top then it's unlikely that they had not changed it from first buying it. When DS1 first went into a HBB he had a Britax Adventure. It got damaged on a plane so I replaced it with a Cybex one. The Cybex one was about 2-3 inches shorter on max height, but I didn't realise until he got to about 9 and it wouldn't go up any higher. This was sold in Germany and Cybex was very big on their "German engineering" credentials at the time! The cheap Britax one was no longer sold and I didn't fancy paying out €100 on a new HBB so we swapped to backless until he was tall enough to sit without.

It was very annoying and I did wish that I had realised at the time. FWIW Cybex now have nice long backed HBBs so it's not a brand thing - I think it was an older model that we had.

Although also worth knowing - due to the shape of some headrests an older child's head will poke out the top and this is OK, it's the position of the shoulder belt guide which is important. The manual should have info about how to line up the headrest with the head position, sometimes you judge it with eyeline/top of ears, sometimes it's distance from shoulder, sometimes the chin is the leveller.

Our son is 9 and ~140cm.
He is still in his high-backed booster seat.
We deliberately bought one that expands width-ways as well as up as he grows, so he can stay in it as long as possible.

Used high back boosters until high school.