over a bloody booster seat 🥵

[StarDolphins]

My 9 year old is being taken to a party in Manchester (1 hour journey) today by the birthday girls parents. She is 134cm (she’s a bit less actually but because her Dad told her she’s that, she’s sticking to it)

Sges currently sobbing and shouting (since 7am off & on) because I’m insisting she has her booster seat when all the other 7 kids won’t have one. She said she’s going to get laughed at and she just wants to fit in & be the same. I’ve tried to be understanding, I’ve said blame it on me, I’ve said they’re not good friends etc.

AIBU to stick to my rule? She’s nearly there but technically still needs a booster until 135cm. I’m just worn down as she’s been crying over this ALL morning🙄

I bet most of the posters saying OP was being ridiculous put their DC in forward facing seats as soon as possible.

@Minniliscious I wouldn’t have a 7yo dictating what happens in the car. Statistically I think you are more likely to have an accident on short trip

SO why do they have to sit in booster seats - because they are not tall enough for the seatbelts to fit them properly. What do these seatbelts do in an accident (there will likely be motorway traffic involved here)?

I think those saying let it go are wrong and the law says so too - and this blatant disregard for road safety is dangerous

I don’t think this is a “these are not your friends” situation at all and the issue should not be moved onto her friends. Unless there’s a consistent pattern of the friends being mean rather than only teasing, then it becomes a much bigger conversation about the friendship group as a whole.

To me, this is more of a “you don’t need to be the same as everyone else, be yourself, every one growns at their own pace” moment. Part of growing up is learning to be confident and not feeling pressure to conform. If friends tease you a bit, it helps to be learn to be resilient, confident, and be able to laugh along.

Booster cushions have their place.

Remembering many tweens won't even have a seat of any description they might still be more comfortable on a cushion than not having anything for a short child.

Easier to get 3 in a back seat than 3 seats.

More comfortable to sit beside.

Honestly, I’d have died of embarrassment being seen using a booster seat at 9 years old. Children can be so cruel, don’t do this to her. Especially as she’s so close to the safety limit anyway.

Times have changed! We used to ride in the footwell of the car sometimes! No one would dream of that now.

my tall 9 year old is still in a high back booster along with most of her friends.

I would say yes they were sexist or thoughtless because we all know to some Women are invisible and yes women are more likely to die as a result!

If you want to get angry and frustrated as woman read this Invisible Women | Caroline Criado Perez https://share.google/KOneO9B7VLB3YkenW

Women and children are frequently left out of safety studies and data sets it's only recently that there was female crash dummies they were modelled on male bodies.

Excuse the copy and paste a quick Google presents this:

The first crash test dummy built to genuinely mimic the anatomy and biomechanics of an average-sized adult woman (5 feet 4 inches tall, 137 pounds) was only unveiled by a team of Swedish engineers led by researcher Astrid Linder in 2022.

Safety Disparities: Due to the male-centric design of safety systems, studies have shown that in a frontal collision of the same severity, women are 73% more likely to be seriously injured and 17% more likely to die than men.

It’s the addition of lower bone density in children too that raises seat belt placement risk.

Would you rather she be embarrassed or be making a decision to donate her organs? Grow up.

Personally I would just drive her there yourself.

In you car problem solved. Just say something like you're running late and meet them there.

Government guidance says they don’t need one..

When my daughter was eight I refused to take one of her friends in my car without a booster cushion. Dad has driven her to ours without one. Fortunately a third friend’s parent had a spare one with them so we could use that. When she was collected in a minibus-type vehicle, she left, sitting on dad’s knee in the front. I do despair of some parents’ attitudes towards safety.

This. UK regulations on child car seats are actually very poor. Booster seat until at least 142cm is safer.

A child having a tantrum doesn't trump your responsibility to keep her safe. How would you feel if you give in and they are involved in a crash?

She’s actually quite a good sport about teasing, we playfully tease each other and she can laugh at herself no problem. These girls are not who I would choose as friends and not ones I would choose for her, though I understand I can’t choose her friends anyway!

2 of them will be nice one day and not the next. They’ll say ‘do I care’ in a drawn out sarcastic voice when she tells them something, they’ll tell her she’s a baby because she’s not watching certain programmes, and they’ll exclude her from their’secret chats’. Then they might be nice. Then back to shitty. Awful they are but when pulled up by the teacher they stick together and say nope, we never said that.

I feel your pain.
For what it's worth, the minimum height for children to stop using a booster seat in the UK is one of the lowest in the western world. It's 150cm minimum in the EU and 145cm in the USA. However, as 80% of parents stop using them often well before the legal minimum, it puts pressure on the remaining parents to concede or risk socially embarrassing their own children.

We probably need a public safety ad on this to educate parents on the risks that an adult seatbelt poses for children (and women as they were designed for the male of the species who is taller on average than most women).

Car companies should probably start from scratch and design new seat belts that suit women as well as men.

I would rather her be safe and I just think nearly there isn’t there but I also didn’t want her to be embarrassed and picked on either. Which is why I sent her off without the booster. But I don’t feel good I’ve had to.

The 2 girls she has as friends not in this group would never even think to start taking the piss and belittling her so my daughter doesn’t mention it in those instances.

I live in Ireland and my children were all small for their age so they all used boosters way past the age their friends did.

My 12 year old dd is 142cm tall and nowhere near 36kg. She should technically still be using a booster but I just recently let her stop because I was happy with how the seatbelt in our car was fitting her, and her legs reach the right spot on the seat.

All my kids were in the position where they were in a friend's car and they were the only child made to take a booster seat. None of their friends ever teased them for it. They just accepted that because they were small they weren't tall enough yet to sit without one. My kids all have nice friends who wouldn't tease them for being small.

I think the issue is her choice of friends, unfortunately.

I did give in & I feel awful and just sat waiting for her to get home safely is awful too.

This is still what my 11 year old uses. I don't care if he hates it, to me this is the safest option.

OP, I can understand that safety guidelines dictate to the centimeter that your daughter can still be in a booster seat and that you have an intense desire for her to be safe but, I don't think that this is the hill to die on. (Sorry, poor choice of words cuz I know you're concerned about her safety on the road but, you know what I mean.)

I would have a discussion with her when she's calm and just tell her look, there's a lot of things in life that we don't like, but they're designed for safety. And each one of them have made it to market and are part of our lives today, because people have had to die or be seriously injured before these products were made, and made into law.

That's the terrible thing about safety. You don't realize that it'll save you, until it's too late. If there's an accident, and you're not properly secured, it could change your life. I'm not trying to scare you, I'm just trying to tell you this is why we have to do things we don't always like to do, like why you've been in a booster seat, like why we wear seatbelts, like why we get vaccinations, like why we eat our vegetables!

Absolutely do not give in to her when she's hysterical because she might get the idea that yelling and screaming and crying and carrying on gets results, 100% say that when you can calm down and we can discuss this, that's when we'll talk about it especially if you've already made the decision that she can go without the booster seat, so she'll feel that by having a calm and logical discussion with you, that's "how she won"...

Long after this birthday party has been forgotten, she might remember that having a good logical calm discussion with you and not getting upset got her what she needed to have.
And maybe she'll come to you in the future with other concerns in a common logical way. 9 years old is young but not so young, and kids grow up fast. She'll be a teenager before you realize it. I can only imagine how much anxiety you'll have for her being on the road then when she's a driver.....

There is no point in having your 9-year-old sit on a booster cushion from the POV of safety. Insisting she uses one is the automotive equivalent of security theatre.

@StruggleFlourish it's not safety guidelines - it's the law!!

She’s no less safe than she would be were she 2 cm taller 😆
You are being quite ridiculous.

Only if there are no seat belts in the rear of the car!!
No child of mine would have travelled in such a car.