What next after ERF?

[YouHaveBeenOutbid]

We currently use a BeSafe Izi Combi beltfix ERF seat for a heavy almost 3 and a half year old who will soon be reaching the weight limit for the ERF seat. This may sound dim but what should we be looking at next? Does he move straight to a booster cushion and the adult belt or is there an inbetweeny stage seat? I spent so long researching rear facing but don't have a clue about the next stage!

Sorry I can't help, but will watch this with interest. My 2.10 DS will have to hand over his ERF seat within the next 6 months to DD and I'm not sure what to get him next.

Good question. Hopefully someone will be along to help soon!

We're a long way of that stage yet but we will probably look at something like the cybex pallais when we need to. I don't know much about it as only noticed it when we were looking at the sirona and as we're not looking for that stage of seat we didn't pay too much attention.

We're in the same position as you YouHaveBeenOutbid and I think this high backed booster is the kind of thing to get.

You can just use a booster like this but the high backed one looks safer.

A good high back booster. Definitely not a cushion on its own. Some boosters now cone with isofix for added safety, you still use the seat belt on the child but the seat is anchored in place and would not slide about in case of accident.

WTF happened to my links? Can anyone else see the list of different shops/prices that was added in when I hit post or is it just appearing on mine?

We moved from ERF to a Britax Kidfix xp sict as I wanted something that offered better protection than just a booster seat on its own. The other good points are that it's Isofix and will last DS until he no longer needs to use a seat.

I think DH would have just gone for a booster seat if it was just up to him but he was happy to go with a full seat once he saw the extra protection it gives.

Thanks all. RubbishRobot, you've got 2 John Lewis links on your post. Was there more?

It's showing a list of prices for the seat from JL, Kiddisave and Amazon when I just pasted the hidden link to the JL page. Odd, never seen that before.

We have the maxi cosi rodi air protect for dd1 and I plan to get the same for our twins for dh's car then wonder about Isofix in mine. Dh doesn't have Isofix. I'm not sure though as with Isofix there's no wiggle room (probably a good thing but not sure how I'll plug in three seats if I can't wiggle my arm between the seats).

You need a high backed booster. Booster cushions are only really suitably for children who have officially outgrown a HBB by height (limited to 135cm in some cars) and/or width but still need some belt positioning help - eg, in our ould Mazda 6, DS1, at just turned 9 was 136 cm tall (135cm limit in that car) and couldn't sit straight in a fairly generous HBB due to wide shoulders, but the seatbelt crossed his neck, so we bought a booster cushion until he no longer had the problem. We ditched that when his bum became too wide.

It doesn't matter what car you are in, you can officially stop using a child seat when your child reaches 135cm.

But as has been pointed out, at 135cm the seatbelt is still going to be sitting across the child's neck and possibly too high up on their abdomen too. My son is about 134cm tall, and there is no way that with just another 1cm of growth he'll be ok without a child seat. In fact I think that in a lot of European countries a child has to be 150cm tall to sit in the car without a child seat.

My son is still comfortable in a high backed booster, so that's where he'll be staying for a while yet!

We moved to an Axkid mini kid belted ERF which goes up to 25kg, which my 6 yr old is still happily sitting in.