ERF's - What age did you move to forward facing?

[GreenApplesandPinkHam]

One of my sons is 4.5 yrs old and weighs 18kg. He needs a new car seat as his was damaged in a house move .

My eldest son was turned forward facing age 6 after he started to get embarrassed on the school run and we also needed the seat for his little brother .

I can't decide whether to get a Britax Advansafix and harness my 4.5 year old or get another ERF which will last us 1.5 years max (beyond age 6, I can't see it being practical for us !)

Help please !

I'd recommend the britax Advansafix, my 5yr old son is 20kg and has that carseat it's a great car seat.

I turned mine both around 4.5 years. They now use the Cybex solution car seat

I've got exactly sale dilemma. DS 4.5yrs currently erf in his Besafe Izi Combo, but he's getting close to the 18kg at which point I need to face him forward without isofix - which to me negates the point.

We have a Cybex M Solution in our overseas car and it's very good and I like the side impact bars and the head rest that goes back when he sleeps.

I'm leaning to getting the isofix version now as opposed to another erf that will only last another couple of years. I also understood that you can't use isofix erf post 18kg and I just don't trust the seatbelt so much.

Once a child is at least 4 1/2 (and meets the minimum weight requirement of 15kgs for a high backed booster) there isn't any evidence that says having a 5-point harness is any safer than using the seatbelt.

In my head (and a few others I have read saying the same thing) it's better to have that little initial 'give' in the seatbelt which allows the child's body to move forward slightly with their head rather than having a harness pinning the child's body down and only allowing the head to move forward. Of course I am only talking about older children here, the very fact that pinning the child's body back with a harness puts so much force on a child's neck in a crash is why all children should sit rear facing until they are 4 (my own 4 1/2 year old only weighs 14kgs so the issue of a high backed booster won't be coming into play for a long time yet, she's rear facing in a Diono Radian 5). But there isn't any testing that's been done to show the results of a harness versus a seatbelt for over 4's.

The safest thing would obviously be a 25kgs ERF seat, but that's a lot of money to spend on a seat that can't convert to a high backed booster if you don't have any more children to pass it down to.

If you do decide on forward facing I don't think it's worth (financially) buying a harnessed seat. The Britax Advansafix II looks good on paper but the harness doesn't have the height to allow a 25kgs child to sit in it if they are even slightly taller than average and I've also read that it doesn't position the seatbelt brilliantly as a high backed booster.

If your son is mature enough to understand he has to sit still and upright in a high backed booster for the entire journey and not lean out/put his arm over the top of the diagonal part of the belt/unfasten the seatbelt buckle then I think if you choose forward facing a high backed booster will be the best thing.

We turned out twins when they turned 4. They are very tall at 112cm and 18.2 kgs. We use a Britax HBB.