Do other parents see car seats just as cosmetic / a polite courtesy?

[Octagonchecker]

Since my DD7 started school we have had 3 occasions where she was offered a lift somewhere by another parent, but they only had one car seat, and when I said oh no she can't travel without a car seat, they said my DD could have the car seat and they would have their own child ride without one. As if the car seat is not essential, and it's polite to give it to the guest, the way you might give up your seat on the sofa. On these occasions they looked at me like I was a right weirdo when I said don't worry we'll walk. But I would never be happy seeing another little kid ride without a car seat and potentially come to harm so that my DD could have their seat!

DD has been invited to a birthday party where the mum plans to pick up 4 of them from school and take them to a venue in a different part of town (will be on the dual carriageway). DD absolutely wants to go to this party, it's a close friend. But there is no way the mum has 4 car seats, the birthday girl is an only child. So I assume the plan is to just not have car seats. But all the other mums are saying yeah sounds great! I don't know how to bring it up without sounding like a total party pooper since nobody else has mentioned it. And I feel like if I did bring it up she might say that my DD can have her child's car seat and she will ride without, like every other time this has happened? I can't take DD to the venue myself though because I've got my younger one to pick up from nursery during the party and DH has the car that day anyway so it's not an option. I'm wondering whether I'm the weirdo in this situation.

Assuming the mum is either picking up the other kids from their houses, or you are dropping them off at a central location for her to take, why would you not just give her the kid's car seat too? The only reason I see a problem with that is is you and your kid were taking a bus or walking to another location to meet the mum with the car, but if she's picking up and dropping the kids from/to home, that's easy.

I am 100% with you OP. And when you out grow car seats the next issue is 4 teens in the back of a car and no one wears a seatbelt because they won’t fit. And people say “it will be fine this once” and “I’ll drive slowly”.

But my friend travelled in a limo without a seatbelt, slowly, and when the limo driver broke too hard she crashed face first into the panel behind the drivers seat. 20 years later she still has a twisted jaw, 20 years of migraines and pain, has undergone multiple surgeries, she is sadly quite disfigured, no amount of surgery is fixing her face completely. She was a very beautiful teen.

All because she wanted to go to the school end of year ball in a limo with her friends and despite her mum’s concern her friends’ mums pressured her mum into letting her go because “it would be ok this one time”.

This is me and not afraid to admit it.

Definitely normal to offer to lend your car seat in this scenario. Sometimes you'll get 'no, don't worry, older DD/DS won't be with us so we'll have a spare' but it's polite to offer.

I know a couple of people who wouldn't worry about it hugely or whose children went onto boosters pretty early for whatever reason - and it does get easier when you can use a booster as they're so much more portable. But I think generally, what people are getting at is that they expect you to sort the seat.

We’d always drop off a car seat for a party or play date, yadnbu, at 7 it’s madness they don’t always use car seats!

You can get slimline travel car seats which would be a good compromise so you don't have to limit her or yourself with lifts etc.

With you OP. My children were in boosters until 140cm which is the recommended height in our country. I did not allow them in a car without a booster until that height. I also didn’t allow them in the front seat until they were ten.

I’d like to know how many deaths there were before child seats were the norm?

It is a long while since car seats were not the norm and there were far fewer cars on the road but the cars didn’t have so many safety features as they do today. You just can’t compare.

As far as safety goes, you really have to consider the car your child is travelling in as well. They are not going to do so well in a small 15 year old car.

I have been told I was strange for insisting any child I pick up / drop off has a car seat. It’s so bad I now keep spare ones

Yes you are out of touch. My children were in a seat belt only by 7 but my grandchildren are not and they are tall for their age.

I have a big car my grandchildren are 7 and 8 I keep booster seats in the boot.

My nephew (he’s size of a 10 year old so tall but is 7) has been without a car seat for the past year or so both in his parents car and anyone else’s.

You obviously haven’t been in London buses then! I’ve been in one accident on a bus and had bus drivers break hard (so people holding on fell) on several occasions.

My over 135cm 7 year old is still in a car seat. When we give her smaller friends a lift, they use her seat and she uses a spare. We have 3 car seats and 2 boosters in storage for such scenarios. It's only recently that dc1 (11 and over 150 cm) moved away from using a booster.

We have put her seat in other people's cars when needed. I've always been happy to accommodate other parents wishes.

Im feeling envious of all the 7 year olds who are too tall for a car seat and nearly the same height as me it's was sure I was about 10 year old height! 🤣

Yes see this a lot! I would say around 50% of people I see from school have their kids out of a car seat reception age which baffles me. But then I worked in a trauma centre for many years so have first hand experience of the consequences of not using one. I have taken 4 kids out for a party all age 7 and used booster seats. I had 2 and 2 mums bought 2.

Can your DD use a booster? The law is above 125cm and over 22kg they can, is so that’s an option and what I have done when my son has had ride, I just take that with him.

I didn't consider giving her our car seat oddly enough!

There you go OP, hopefully all sorted.

No way should you at any time, compromise the safety of your child, not for, or with, anyone.

It's quite unusual I think. I was thinking 135cm is around 10 years old, but mine are older now, so I just looked it up.

Average 7 yo is 121cm.
Children reach 135cm on average 9 or 10

Your experience doesn't mean Jafferz is wrong.

We have a spare booster seat for if there is an extrs kid riding along. Can you buy a chesp booster and give it to the other mum for you daughter to use for the party. Just say you have a spare. I think you can buy inflatable ones for travel.

By their 8th birthday, 9% of children are over 135cm. It's the same for girls and boys. At the 7th birthday it's about 1% for boys and less than 1% for girls.

I think people actually just don't know the law, and assume. The change for backless boosters to be over 125cm has also confused some people - 125cm is 50th centile for 7.5 years.

The other thng I think is we are in a slight blind spot at the moment where the rule about booster seats/car seats being needed for 3-12 years came in in 2003, so most parents of primary school aged children were too old to have been aware of the change when it became law as they were already well over 12, but they didn't have DC yet so it didn't affect them from that side either.

Most of our generation know car seats for young children and babies as the norm, but not for children over about 5/6 years old.

Gen Z will know differently, as they will have been under 12 when the law changed and will probably remember using booster seats up to the 135cm limit because there was a lot of publicity/news coverage about it at the time (many people thought it was madness, especially for children who had already stopped using a booster).

I don't know for sure, but I highly suspect if you mapped booster usage by age on a chart by year, you'd see usage for 6-12 year olds spike suddenly in 2003, then stay high for about 10 years and start to slowly tail off again as it stopped being discussed.

In industry a change which occurred 10-15 years earlier is ancient history so it's assumed "everyone" knows, but that doesn't take into account the generational nature of this kind of rule change.

Not for the last 15 years.

135cm which I think is about 8-11.

Eldest is 10, half his friends still bring backless boosters when anyone gives them a lift. We have some trunki boostapacks for when we have friends in the car. You are not weird!