To be shocked people are actually rear-facing their primary age kids

[EmsandPens]

My DD is 4, 5 in December and we swapped her from rear facing to forward facing in January this year. She started primary school recently and I noticed one of her classmates is still rear facing. I know the family from around town but had never seen them putting their kids in the car before and I know this child is already 5 and has pretty long legs for her age.

I know on Mumsnet it’s quite common to hear people saying rear facing until 6/7 is best but I had never actually seen anyone around here doing it.

AIBU to be shocked people actually rear face their primary age children?
Did you rear face your child past 4?

Thanks @BertieBotts. From a scientific view of forces in a crash its always made sense that yes, it is safer. But the Statistical side bothered me.

The same with Isofix seats being safer, but its more to do with they are more likely to be fitted correctly than just because they are "better".

I have to say @BertieBotts is just the best on this topic and is unfailingly polite and pleasant as well which unfortunately isn’t always true elsewhere.

There are definitely choices if you want to continue to RF. I have a Britax max way plus which are no longer made but compact. Ive fit it in various cars including smaller cars like a corsa. Axkid and Avionaut have some compact options which can be used rear facing to 25kg.

There is a similar gap between what the stats/guidance says and what a lot of people do at the older end of car seat use too - we kept our full (by then forward facing) car seats until DS was well past 10 as they still fitted him and were more supportive, but from around age 8 other children we gave lifts to were appalled if we expected them to sit in an identical full car seat too as most didn't even use a booster anymore at home.

Things have certainly changed in the past nearly 40 years. My newborn babies travelled on the back set of the car in a carrycot. Child was strapped into carrycot and carrycot was strapped into the car. We actually didn't have any rear seatbelts in that car and had to have the straps installed especially. It sounds completely mad now!

I am astonished at some of the people who are astonished that ERF is a thing! My eldest is 11 and the information was certainly widely available then. There are people on this thread with very young children who claim to be unaware - and yet even if you don't use the internet for anything else, ever, there are very regular threads on Mumsnet about this very thing. How have you missed it?

For the very dismissive posters insisting they couldn't be so cruel as to squash their child's legs, it's time to peer outside your little bubble. Do you also ignore up to date advice about stomach sleeping, weaning, smoking around children, drinking alcohol while pregnant etc? Again, the information is very widely available.

• Extended rear facing car seats do no squash children's legs. They are designed to accommodate growing legs. Many chidren complain that their legs are uncomfortable when they switch to forward facing and have to dangle their legs.
• Rear or forward facing, children are facing the front or the back of a seat. This argument is just pathetic.
• You do not need an enormous car. A correctly fitted forward facing seat requires 55cm of space between the car seat itself and the back of the front seat in the car. If you don't have that space, it's not safe to use a forward facing car seat in the space. Rear facing car seats don't carry the same requirement so in theory can actually fit safely into a smaller space.
• There are rare cases where an issue such as car sickness or an unusual, outsize child can mean it makes sense to forward face earlier than is ideal, but this doesn't make it safer for a child in an accident.

If you are lucky enough never ever to be in an accident then perhaps putting any thought into it is a waste of time - but then of course if we knew things like that then insurance, seat belts, car safety in general wouldn't even exist as a concept... Let's be clear, no-one's talking about forward or rear facing car seats having an impact on car safety for everyday, accident free driving (for all of the 'I turned mine forward facing at 9 months and they were fine' brigade). The point is what happens if the worst happens. and the evidence is incontrovertible. Serious accidents are fortunately rare, but you don't want to be the person who has the worst happen and have to spend the rest of your life wondering if you could have taken better decisions that would have protected your children more comprehensively.

Rather than scoff (I can't think why you would? Do you take it as an implied criticism because you didn't educate yourself? I don't know), if you are parents, grandparents, childminders or anyone else who may carry a child in their car, it behoves you to take whatever action necessary to keep that child as safe as possible. If you decided to forward face at a young age because you have weighed up the information and for whatever reasons (car sickness being one of them), that's fair enough. But please don't come out with bollocks about squahed legs or boredom from a view of the seat justifying that being a safer choice in any way, because it isn't.

Rear facing for as long as possible and as long as they outgrow the extended rear face seat is safest.
So I clicked YABU. To say you’re shocked is an over reaction. I find it surprising that some forward face at the earliest opportunity (I’ve seen some as young as 9months!)

My son is 5.5 years old started year 1 today and still rear facing in his extended rear facing seat.

He has been in the same seat since he was about 14 months old and outgrew his infant carrier.

His seat goes to 125cm and 25KG,
Currently he is 20KG and 112cm (ish) in age 5-6 clothes about 50th centile. Therefore we have at least a year in this seat left if not 18 months so he will be almost 7 I think!
When outgrown he will go into a high back booster forward facing.

Children this age are comfortable to rest to rest their feet on the seat or sit cross legged.
My son has long legs yet still perfectly comfortable, (you can install in extended leg room position), probably more comfortable than dangling legs down.
He has never complained about rear facing.

My own comment cross posted with yours

But YES all of this!!! ^

Also the boredom excuse I never understood that one! My son gets a great view from the side window, he is higher up, and his mirror (which I use to keep an eye on him) helps him see out the front. So I think he gets a better view than staring at the back of a seat rest.

Assumed boredom is such a poor excuse for not doing the safest thing.

There are now more widely available seats up to 36KG so this is helping keep higher centile children rear facing longer which is great.

They were not around when I bought our RF seat, my son is in a 25Kg seat but average percentiles

My son rear faced until he outgrew his ERF seat. This was the November, as he’d started Reception in the September when he hit 25kg (always been a high centile kiddo). I would have liked him to RF for longer.

I feel bad because I’m sure DS (now 14) was FF ridiculously early 😬 It seemed to be the norm that once they outgrew the baby car seat (the ones that slotted in the ‘travel system’ prams, again outdated?) they would go in a bigger forward-facing seat.

If I had another baby now I would 100% FF for as long as possible.

My son is RF and he’s going into year 1 tomorrow. He hasn’t outgrown his seat by weight or height yet so no reason to move him to a ff seat. He’s never complained about his legs being uncomfortable and looks in no way squashed. (I have a v averagely sized Nissan note so nothing massive at all)

Axkid and other brands now to extended rear facing seats up to 36KG
so this would be your best bet!

Look for Swedish plus tested seats.

I have a Axkid Minikid 2 my 5yo is in, this is only to 25KG but I believe the minikid 4 is 36kg.

There are some fantastic extended rear facing Facebook groups which can advise and point you to local stockists of ERF seats

@BertieBotts it was the Britax romer hi-way I believe.
He was a big baby, just shy of 11lb at birth and he grew out of his car seat pretty young. I had read about extended rear facing but couldn't find anything, it was circa 2012. I found car safety center in Belfast and ordered it there, I'm in the Republic and as far as I recall it cost a small fortune to us at the time including delivery. Well worth it though
At that stage i hadnt known anyone else who had extended rear facing seats. I think people who saw us thought we were nuts to be honest.

High Street shop workers are woefully undertrained in the fitting of car seats, even now.

Really you need a specialist retailer rather than a high street shop like Smyths, Halfords etc who don’t deal with ERF.

When I was 22 I did a Christmas temp job at Toys R Us in the babies R Us department.
I had expectant families come to look at baby stuff and I had to take the display seats and fit them in the cars to test them to check the fit. I had zero training on this, and was told to read the display information!!

Still rear facing in year 1 and no plans to switch any time soon. Not seen anyone else on my school run doing so but I also mostly walk. I think I know two people in real life with axkids and I know a lot of educated professional parents.

I suspect a lot of new parents go to places like JL, Halfords etc to get their infant seat. Often you then get sold on the isofix base also fits the next stage 18 kg seat. You have to do your research to find out about Axkid, Besafe and Britax ERF seats. Increasingly parents need seats in 2 or 3 different cars which is £££

There is plenty of education that could be done like coats, not putting child FF in front seats of cars and vans, not driving with spin seats facing the window on laps etc. However unless it comes from the government it will come down to parents doing their own research.

I saw something recently about that, but the height limit was still 125cm which wouldn't help me! My kids are very heavy but also a higher centile for height than for weight, so very tall 😅 They outgrew their Minikid 2 by height rather than weight.

Great that it exists though!

My son isn't 4 yet but he is still rear-facing. I'm more shocked at the amount of toddlers I see (his age and younger) that I see already forward-facing. Why would any parent move away from what is safer? Yet so many seem to. I think it's ignorance. Or parents just follow like sheep. They perhaps think 'Oh I never see any forward facing kids so it must be OK to do that too'. My son is on the smaller side of his age and I will continue to rear-face him until he tells me he's uncomfortable. He doesn't complain so I will continue to do what is the safest way for now.

Can see all the sheep on here - so many saying along the lines of 'only see extended rear-facing on Mumsnet'. So what? That's your excuse for not keeping your child the safest that you can? Do better, it's a pathetic argument!

These parents will l get black out drunk and ‘look after’ their kids whilst in that state and leave drugs around the home where kids can access them - but god forbid forward facing their children because it’s ‘unsafe’.

I have known parents to meet with other parents after school at the pub and will drive home after drinking but will preach about how unsafe forward facing kids are. Like, don’t you think drunk driving is unsafe out of anything, but you still do that?

You are shocked that people have learned it’s safer to rear face, that since we can buy car seats that rear face up to potentially 7, that people do this??

In theory, we’d all be safer and get less injuries, if we rear faced. But at least while their bones are still weaker why would you not?

The car seat I have for my daughter will rear face until 125cm or 36kg (whichever comes first) she is tall so I expect and hope to get to 6 years. Then she will be ready for a high backed booster.

Yep! The seat was rear facing to 25kg back in 2016 and my child was small for their age.

The idea is that it's safest to keep them in it for as long as possible until they outgrown it by weight or height.

Is that the Britax Two Way Elite?

We had that one a d we loved it!

Before that, we had the Kiss 2 where the infant seat part would slot into a bigger frame.

I remember when my youngest was a baby, we went to look around a nursery school and wheeled him along on it as it had a handle so you could pull it along behind you like a wheeled suitcase. He slept like a dream in the school office in that seat while we looked around the nursery.

We used to have people stop us to ask about this seat.

It rear faced to 13kg in the infant part and 18kg using the whole frame.