group 1 seat for small 4 year old.

[woolpitcher]

I have an almost 4 year old dd who weighs 12.4kg and is 84cm tall. This is obviously pretty small. However she is proportioned as an almost 4 year old would be, not as a toddler of that weight and height would be iyswim. She is currently in a lovely erf klippan triofix.

I am planning to turn her forward facing at 4 (and yes I am aware she could rf for longer, but 1. So long as she as in proportion and her bone maturity is age appropriate rather than size appropriate, which her paed assures me it is, she will be as safe as any other 4 year old in a ff seat and 2. while I am aware of benefits of rear facing past 4 dd is having difficulty with other children treating her age appropriately because of her height so I feel ff will be best for her.).

While I could use the triofix in forward facing mode I have a 15 month old currently in a britax hiway 1 which is getting pretty beat up so I want to use the triofix for him instead. (This is not why I am moving dd out of rf- would happily buy another erf if it was appropiate for dd, but it is not.)

Seat needs to fit in a volkswagon touran, along with a klippan triofix and a maxi cosi rodi fix. Would slightly prefer something with a seatbelted base as it might occasionally be useful to transfer to a non-isofix car. All suggestions welcome.

shameless self bump!

Maybe something like a Britax Evolva that will turn into a HBB. Or a seat with an impact cushion like the Kiddy ones.

I completely cannot understand your reasoning for turning her around. If it is safer before she is 4 it is safer afterwards and until she grows out of it. Perceived peer pressure shouldn't be a factor.

Do 4 yos really crowd around car doors and judge short 3yos?

I thought my DD2 was small, she's 3 1/2, 12.5kgs and 92cm tall. She'll be rear facing in her Britax Multi Tech II until she's at least 6, and possibly longer (no danger of her exceeding the 25kgs weight limit on it for a good few years yet!).

Even if when she goes to school she notices that all her friends are on high backed boosters, or backless ones even, she won't be going forward facing. If she gets invited to friends houses I'll check if they are going to be walking home, and if not I'll be driving her myself as I very much doubt she'll even have reached the 15kgs minimum for a high backed booster. Luckily most people do walk.

Have you looked at the Joie Stages? We have it in my parents' car as an ERF seat but it also FFs and eventually turns into a HBB - I think they advertise it as lasting until about 7yrs. It's a relatively compact seat so might fit - so you need all three to fit across one back seat, as it were, or do you have two rows of seats? (Clueless about cars!)

We had the same dilemma s couple of years ago and went for a kiddy guardian.

Alicemum09 I assure you they do all check out each other's seats and talk endlessly about it in class. After 2-3 weeks of dd1 sobbing helplessly at pick up and drop off, refusing play dates and insisting I parked way away from school so no one would see her "stupid toddler car seat" we swapped her into a group 1 ff seat perhaps wrongly but she was having huge huge issues about being small and it really wasn't helping

I would avoid anything which is only harnessed to 18kg. It's very likely that the top slots for the harness won't fit for very long. Unfortunately, that rules out most of the 123 seats.

An impact shield avoids the issue of being physically too small in the harness for an older child, but I'm not convinced that it's very safe when the impact shield is only covering a smaller section of their body, if that makes sense.