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🙄

So you have no idea what you're talking about 🙄

Car seat adbice can change quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if the law is 150 by the time your unborn child is 8 or 9.

When my eldest was born people still thought it was OK for 6momth olds to be FF. Now its not uncommon for 6yos to rear face! Thats advice not law, but the RF age has gone up a lot.

I was laughing at the state-instilled neuroticism over a 1cm discrepancy leading to a mum panicking over whether or not she should embarrass her 9 year old by putting her in a booster seat while her friends don't need one.

Just because I've used some of the most basic, bare minimum logic while not yet having practical knowledge of booster seats is now something you're going after? Don't roll your eyes too hard, they might get stuck that way.

Doesn't surprise me.

@YorkshireGoldDrinker have you done any research on car seats?

It amazes me how quickly some parents move their DC through car seat range to booster seat to none, they seem to see it as a race to get their child out of the seat, so reducing the safety of their child. DC were in their rear facing seat much longer than most of their peers (this was before extended RF seats were more easily available). I remember the lady in the shop where we got all our baby accessories including seats saying legs can mend necks not so much, so better to have the neck support provided by RF seats. Whereas many of our friends went FF as soon as possible.

Yes. My son's car seat will be rear-facing, so in the event of a head-on collision, his head will be cushioned by the back of the car seat. It'll be rear-facing right up until he no longer fits in it, at which point we'll put him in a booster seat until he's tall enough to be able to sit in the car without a booster seat.

My research:

FF = whiplash
RF = no whiplash

I'm 26 weeks along today and I'm still getting my hospital bag together. We've earmarked a pram, car seat, bassinet, Moses basket set and will be purchasing the lot in January. We're not getting any of this stuff second-hand either, especially not the car seat.

Adult bones are different to child bones 🙄.

Also majority of seats and seat belts in car are designed and tested for men. Now women. So yes even adults would benefit from a proper fitting seat belt.

I can't believe how many of you are saying OP is being unreasonable. It's about her childs safety & keeping within the law. Yes it's only 1 cm but that 1 cm is included in the restricted measurements which have been tested for maximum safety. If you're willing to let 1cm slide, would you be willing to let another 2 or 3cm slide & put your child at more risk?
OP I'd try & have a calm discussion with your DD explaining that it's not you who has decided the height & weight a child has to be to not use a car seat. Let her know you understand her being embarrassed but you'd rather her be alive & embarrassed than dead or seriously hurt. Maybe ring the Mum who'll be driving explaining the situation & ask her to tell your DD that she'll not break the law by allowing your DD to travel with her without her car seat. TBH It is the drivers responsibility so you should mention it to her regardless & give her the choice of whether she will take your DD with or without the seat. Stick to your decision. You'd never forgive yourself if god forbid, anything happened & you'd not insisted on her being in her car seat.

Shorter people, especially women, (as others have said seatbelts aren't designed for woman torso) do need to consider whether an adult booster seat would be required. Other issue is closeness to front airbag as more likely to cause injury if it goes off if sit too close to it

There are a lot of 'cool' mums on MN. They're not like regular mums.

Absolutely not unreasonable at all.
it’s a legal requirement until 135cm or 12 years old. HOWEVER many kids aren’t safe without a seat until they’re 150cm!

they’re bones arent properly fused until at least 12 and if they were in an accident she’d likely be very hurt.
stick to your guns! Tell her you refuse to break the law to save her being embarrassed. You’re the parent and responsible for her safety!!

It must be a very long time since anyone thought it was ok for a 6mth old to Forward Face, the law was 9mths for as far back as I can remember.
Group 0 seats were replaced by 0+ which are bigger and designed to accommodate babies to at least 13mths old.

How old is your oldest?

I once had an someone come up to me to tell me his eldest is 70.

Unfortunately only 14. Law and what people actually thought was OK are two different things. (DD outgrew her baby seat at about 13 months).

I also knew 2yos in booster seats.

Our children's centre was still giving out leaflets saying you could put babies forward facing when they were 9kg, 6 months or could sit up unaided when DS1 was a toddler, he's 17 now as well. They were out of date when they were being handed out, I took one home for the interest value.

When he had his 9 month check the health visitor tried to insist as he weighed 9kg I must forward face him now as it was safer, I must have been a right PITA as I kept insisting politely that it was not, and his car seat allowed him to stay rear facing until 13kg which I intended to make the most of. He was about 18 months when I had to FF him as could not afford the ERF seats back then. Joie seats didn't exist yet. He was the oldest RF baby I knew of at the time! Everyone FF around 9mo, the safety cautious people waited until about 11mo.

Things have changed astonishingly quickly. Spin seats, and Joie making RF seats for under £100 were the two biggest things to change rear facing into the toddler years from being something weird and widely thought ludicrous to something completely normal IMO. The tide turned suddenly, somewhere around 2016.

@BertieBotts is 2016 around the time i-size was launched?

i-size (more so the new standard R129) was launched in 2013, it took a few years for seat models to filter onto the market, but I'd say yes, it probably had a lot to do with it, partially because the majority of i-size seats which replaced the old "Group 1" (the 9-18kg / 9 months to 4 years category) were spin seats or modular base inserts which had the ability to rear face up to roughly age 4. Practically, most people find this size of seat is too cramped to continue rear facing past about age 2, but it certainly got people past the first hump which was assuming only infant carriers could rear face, and the second hump which was assuming a "normal" age to forward face was about 9 months (or ability to sit up) which had been the prevailing wisdom basically since car seats were first invented, at least outside of Sweden/Norway.

The other positive impact that R129 had was the focus on the lower age restriction against forward facing before 15 months and the resulting marketing campaigns promoting the value of longer rear facing. Because this was a significant jump up from 9 months it changed people's behaviour. I remember reading that there was some disagreement in the regulating body around where exactly to set this limit. The US was having a shift at the time where many states had raised the minimum age to FF to 2 instead of 1 year, after an influential study claiming up to age 2, rear facing is 5x safer (which was later retracted). Swedish road safety authorities and various European studies pointed to 4 years as the milestone, and wanted the full 105cm. Business was against this as felt consumers would not go for it - ERF was not popular with manufacturers at the time.

But anyway, I think the fact that it was 15 months was helpful in terms of the fact that most infant carriers despite their marketing don't practically last all the way to 15 months, so when choosing the second seat parents are forced to look for options which include a rear facing feature, and then the fact they're faced with all this choice, literally dozens of models which can rear face all the way up to 105cm (or longer) whereas previously there were a couple of seats like Britax First Class, which did RF up to 13kg/FF 18kg or the little-known and expensive Swedish imports, but over 90% of the seats on the market, including everything with any interesting features at all, were forward facing only.

When you've moved to a second stage seat that can stay rear facing then often people do just carry on a bit longer. Some people ignore it completely of course. Some switch on the 15 month mark ASAP because they misunderstand the rule or just prefer it or don't know that there's a continued safety benefit, but a reasonable proportion of parents (about a quarter, which surprised me) continue to RF up to about age 2-3.

Another market shift which had happened a few years previously also inadvertantly helped - when the law changed to require the use of boosters up to age 12 rather than them having been optional previously, there was quite a big explosion in the number of the "Group 1-2-3" type seats which converted from forward facing harness seat to high backed booster (and sometimes further to a backless booster). Previously there had really only been two types of car seat - the RF carry type for young babies, and the FF Group 1 seat. Of course booster seats too, but they were always optional. When the law came in to enforce booster use, parents didn't like the fact they felt they were being forced to "keep buying seats" so the introduction of an all-in-one from 9 months to 12 years returned things to the previous status quo and they were really popular.

However - Phase 1 of the roll out of R129 did not cover them. The first stage which started in 2013 covered only i-size compliant seats, meaning they had to be fully isofix and up to a maximum of 105cm. 123 type seats include a high backed booster stage, which was only included in the regulation in the second phase which was rolled out in 2017. You could still buy 123 seats in 2013-2016 but they were all R44 so they were less attractive than the shiny newer R129 seats, and mostly popular either at the extremely low budget end of the market, or among parents of older children who needed to vacate the spin seat for a younger sibling to move into it.

The very first spin seats including a RF mode (original Cybex Sirona and Britax Dualfix) were not R129 and neither were any of Joie's original cheap RF seats (Stages/Tilt/Steadi) even though they launched in 2013 as well. So I do think to some extent, the market was going this way anyway regardless of R129. But R129 and i-size definitely helped, yes.

@BertieBotts your car seat knowledge never stops amazing me. Interesting the 5x safer study was later withdrawn yet some people still swear blind its true.

I had a Dual fix isize for DC2 which I purchased around December 17. I have a feeling it was 'pre-ordered' I waited weeks for it. I was just going back to work and I wanted a suitable carseat in each car. We eeked another 6mth out the group 0 baby seat in the other car (short kids)

Yes the 5x safer stat really stuck with people, TBF it was repeated like the gospel on every car seat forum all over the internet for about 10 years, so I can understand people having had it embedded into their brains and assuming that it was true, I know I did.

The study was only retracted in the sense that they couldn't prove it was actually 5x - it is still established and accepted that RF is safer in general, and aside from "using any car seat at all, correctly", RF is still (AFAIK) the thing which makes the most difference outside of anything else. (e.g. a rear facing seat design from 1980, with no isofix/side impact protection/individual harness adjustment/headrest is highly likely to be safer than a FF seat from today with all of today's safety features, as long as the older style seat is in good condition and used correctly.)

One of the big focuses of R129 is error avoidance because errors in car seat use are much more deadly than forward facing. So R129 seats always have harnesses which adjust with the headrest, no more threading straps through the shell of the seat, and less confusion because it is easier to see the position of a headrest relative to a child's head and shoulders. Straps are also not allowed to be fully removable (in the case of a 123 type seat for example) - this used to result in all kinds of alarming errors. They are not allowed to have multiple different belt paths when seatbelt fitting, to reduce confusion. And of course all seats within the i-size subset of R129 have to be isofix fitted, which reduces error compared with seatbelt fitting (though I have concerns about use of top tether, which is frequently missed).

There is actually some research suggesting that parents in Sweden make roughly the same amount of mistakes when fitting child car seats as the rest of Europe, which suggests things like loose harnesses and loose fitting of the seat itself may be much more impactful with forward facing seats, which is backed up with crash tests, and this is likely to be a part of why rear facing seats perform better in real world crashes.