To wonder why parents choose to forward face their child from a young age?

[incognito1991]

Genuinely no judgement I’m just curious, when I had my DD 2 years ago, I knew absolutely nothing about car seat safety and admittedly I still don’t know a lot. When looking into it I learned that children are so much safer rear facing for as long as possible and defiantly between the ages of 0-4. I have removed myself off some car seat safety groups as feel they can be too much sometimes but I was wondering if this is the best guidance why do parents choose to forward face from the legal age?

They got to about 2 and just wanted to be part of the family group facing forward. Once they are not babies they aren't as biddable. Spending the whole time driving with a screaming kid who is trying to unclip herself felt more dangerous then driving with a calm forward facing on. If your child is not yet at the stage where they will contort their body to make it as difficult as possible for you to put the seatbelt on then brace yourself.

Most crash testing is 30mph which is a combined speed, in a head on crash that’s 15mph for each vehicle.

It's not. It's 30mph against a wall, which is the same as 30mph for each vehicle. Yes the total crash energy would be equivalent to 60mph but then it's divided between the two vehicles, so you get back to 30mph again for each vehicle, so a crash test at 30mph against a wall is fine to simulate a real world head on crash at 30mph.

Relevant mythbusters, full episode just because it's fun. Car crash physics sections start at 14:30, 30 mins and 43 mins.

A combination of very long legs and travel sickness for DGD.

We forward face because my child has medically documented spells of being cold, pale, non responsive with a low respiratory drive and if he's doing it while I am driving I want to know all about it so I can stop and manage the situation/call for help. The episodes happen without warning and scare the shit out of lots of the adults around him. He also requires suction at times to maintain a patent airway, throw in seizures and forward facing is far, far safer for us. Our car seat days are numbered anyway as he needs a five point harness to support his sitting as he can't support himself and he's rapidly outgrowing his seat. I can't afford the £2k plus to replace the seat so we will be limited to travelling in his wheelchair accessible vehicle where he also forward faces because I have never seen a wheelchair set-up that accommodates rear facing (we'll ignore the fact that wheelchair travel isn't safety tested for people under 22kg which he is by quite a way).

The same reason people put young kids in the front instead of the back. I can’t understand that either.

Same. It was so anxiety inducing I wasn't able to fully concentrate on the road. He'd scream and scream and scream. I remember one journey where he made such a fuss, me and my two other older ones were also all in tears. It was so stressful.

As soon as I turned him round (around 18 months old) he was absolutely fine. Not a peep.

He's 10 now.

Wonder how other countries where rear facing goes on longer cope with screaming toddlers etc

I know everyone on mumsnet has massive, tall children, but mine are genuinely tall. They've all been in the 98/99 centile from birth. I remember looking at DS when he was 4 or 5 and thinking that, even if I'd wanted to, there was absolutely no way I'd be able to rear face him at his size in our small car. His feet would've touched the windscreen.

This was me. I was very aware of safety and swore before his birth that he would be rear facing till 4. I knew all the stats but I think a hysterically screaming toddler was more likely to make me crash the car then turning him around.

Yes, I agree. They say you can pull the seat backwards towards the front seats but long legged children tend to have long legged parents who need to have the driver’s seat pulled back.

I am willing to be corrected on this but I believe sweeten is the country which normalises rear facing for extended periods often till up to 6. However the legal requirement is that they need to be rear facing untill 15 months.

I would assume if you had a child who got travel sick or became hysterical at bring rear facing they would still consider turning them around at that point. No country that I can see outside of that requires rearfaccing beyond the first year.

To be clear I am not against rear facing I know the safety data and swore I would keep him rear till 4. Alas he inherited my travel sickness, I can't go backwards on a train without feeling like I'm about to throw up in 2 minutes so I'm not massively surprised he gets ill.

I don't know if it would have enough postural support, but Joie Bold (R44) is a forward facing seat with 5 point harness up to 25kg limit with no standing height limit, and the harness height can go up a long way, basically as high as any high back booster seat. Argos have it for £120 at the moment. I thought it was discontinued, but they seem to have plenty of stock.

Apologies if you have had this mentioned a million times but I just thought I would mention it, just in case. Sometimes the specialist car seat places don't know what is available on the standard market, and with the vast majority of seats like this, the 5 point harness is outgrown at 105cm or 18/20kg.

I’m assuming the practicalities of it. My 5 year old still RF, but I have a small car and it means the front passenger seat is pushed completely forward so no one can sit in it. If I had another child I would have to either switch to FF or buy a bigger car. Some people do also seem to either not care or not know about car safety though as I’ve seen kids from my child’s class without car seats and sometimes without any seat belt at all.

There’s pages of people describing vomiting and choking children but yeah how useless are those parents right??!! Should just let them die if choking! That’s the better death right!

So children should be dying in tragic accidents on a daily basis, but aren’t.

At the time, I was at a loss as to how to convince her to practically fold in half to get her legs in when it caused her pain and even crossing her legs meant they were halfway up the back seat and straining her back (she had scoliosis).

Put her forward facing, her legs could extend and she could sit upright - until her shoulders were over the top of the seat, which didn't take long at all - safely and secured.

My own fault for getting with a 6'5" bloke, I guess, as having legs so long she couldn't fold up into the seat on a shopping trolley by 9 months (or slide into one) wasn't anything that had ever occurred to me with my 27" inside leg measurement as an adult.

For us we had a giant- she was uncomfortable in her axkid minikid at 3- was nearly 120cm torso longer than legs and she didn't quite fit under the shoulder area properly ... She is now 5- off the charts for height at 132cm and 33kg.... Legally she probably has maybe 4 months left before she doesn't need a booster....

We took a pragmatic approach. My daughter rear faced on the main car seat until 4.5 after she was sick on a long journey. For the next 3 months she rear faced on short journeys and forward faced on long journeys. We were due to replace her car seat before she turned 5 as as was close to the height and baby brother was due and one day she asked if she could forward face all the time and for the sake of a few weeks we decided to move her forward facing in that seat. She has continued to be car sick whilst forward facing.
The back up car seat can rear face up to 18kg which she would still be able to do but it's just not practical with how it sits in the car. The shape of the seat and the car seat means the seating position is toppling forward. We turned her forward facing in this car seat at 2. We decided it was easier to swap cars rather than get a second car seat. Whoever was doing the longest journey with my daughter took the car with the main car seat in and we kept journeys in the back up seat to the 10 minute pick up from nursery/after school club once or twice a week.

We moved her to a high backed booster as the spare seat at 100cm/ 16kg. We did some reading and spoke to friends as we had read that it's best to wait until 18kg and for the main seat at 104cm /16kg. One of our friends stopped driving their son around between 18 and 20kg as although he was physically big enough for the high backed booster he was very tall for his age and lacked the sturdiness to sit comfortably. This was around the age of 3, by the time he was 3.5 he was more robust and could hold himself up better and they went back to driving. My daughter was nearly 5 by the time she reached 100 cm and was the same size as many of my friends 3 year olds but it was very obvious that she was older than them. Her trunk and neck/head control and coordination of limbs gives their relative ages away. I think this is where the combination of size and age advice is key.

My daughter sits crossed legged whether she was forward or rear facing so the space wasn't a factor for us

My son is only 8 months and is also on a low percentile so I would hope our car seat will do him rear facing until 4 and beyond. We will again take a pragmatic approach and rearrange face for as long and for as many journeys as it makes sense to do.

What are these "everything" that one should try out of interest?

Jumperoos and baby bouncers are both safe if used correctly. Like forward-facing car seats.

FF seats are cheaper than the RF till 7y seats
mine all do ERF but they are v expensive seats
also people presume that if it’s for sale it must be safe. And it is legally safe, just not safest.

Travel sickness, comfort for them (tall kids) and happiness at being able to see and talk to us. My 2.5 year old is too tall for his age 0-4 rotating car seat already and so forward facing was logically what we needed to buy next anyway. Plus we have the added thing that we need a car seat we can take on holiday and without the guarantee of isofix in things like minibuses had to opt for one we could fit with a seat belt. At this point forward facing options are pretty much the only ones unless you have a fortune to spend.

in addition, I drive a Volvo, its built like a tank with side impact protection and I drive very carefully. I do care about my children’s safety and chose the car partly because of it. As other users have said, there are many layers to road safety.

Hysterical screaming and crying in a one year old isn’t a behavioural issue.

DS was very tall. I kept him rear facing for longer than most people seemed to, but eventually it got too difficult to get him into the car, especially when he started fighting any attempt to get him in rear facing.

For sure, it's very difficult to RF in a tiny car with a tall child who doesn't like to cross their legs, needs the seat reclined, and a tight budget necessitating using the existing seat or stretching only to a cheaper seat, and two tall parents. If you have everything like that then it's likely to be tricky to get it to work and it might ultimately not.

But if you can compromise on one of the things, usually the size of the car or the budget for the seat, but also possibly things like the positioning of the seat (e.g. amount of leg room, recline, fitting in middle or front seat, DC one in front of the other) or the recline of the front seats, then it can work. Or you can at least RF until say age 2 if not age 4. Yes there are scenarios where it won't work at all, but I think you can't have everything. People change their car all the time to make more space for DC in general, not only to fit RF seats in. We changed the Swift because we couldn't fit the buggy and a week's shopping into the boot at the same time. And you don't need a car to be gigantic to fit RF seats in, a medium sized car is usually fine. Most extremely tall people don't drive extremely small cars in the first place, and DC usually have long legs or need recline, not both at once (although some cheaper seats can only be fitted reclined).

People do often assume that RF seats take up a lot of space, but if they are more upright they don't need to. We had a Joie 360 Spin (which is the smallest spin seat but not smallest RF seat) in a Suzuki Swift and I didn't have to have the front seat in the most forward position. I found it took up less room than the baby seat, which was much more reclined.

I totally understand and defend "It didn't work with the specific seat we had and we didn't want to research and source a new one when we could just FF" but it is a bit frustrating to see repeated suggestions that RF is frequently impossible unless you have a stretch limousine because that's just not true IME. You would be surprised what can fit if you are willing to spend a bit of time and yes sometimes a bit more money, which I appreciate is not always an option (I would never suggest going into debt for a car seat, especially if you already have one.)

OTOH someone said about a safety gap for FF and that is misleading as well, because the gap is measured from a different part of the seat and is usually only relevant for sports cars where the front seats literally overlap the back seats. It's also only for the legal standard, and not usually instructions for the user, although it is good practice to move front seats away from FF children if possible. I don't know of any RF seat which actually fits within the 50cm gap used in testing for an R129 FF seat. Sometimes a FF seat fits where a RF seat does not, and sometimes a specific seat fits FF where it does not RF, and it's not unsafe to do that necessarily. Generally though if you are breaching the 50cm gap you'll also be squashing the FF child's legs.

OTOH if space is tight, arguably it may be safer to RF because if there is any potential for forward rotation, a RF seat forms a barrier between the child and the seats in front, reducing the risk of head injury. Most seats are allowed to lightly touch the front seat, just not to be wedged up tightly against them. Older seats were designed to do that, but they are no longer sold.

Gallery of ERF in small cars, just for interest, although it's old now: http://erfmission.com/you-cant-rear-face-in-small-cars-debunking-myths-4/