What to do next

[Pinktractors24]

Hi, I am struggling to decide what to do in terms of our next car seats. Currently have DS who is nearly 4 in Minikid 2 and DD who is 8 months in Britax Baby safe Core. DS is between 50th and 75th centile for height and around 75th for weight. DD is currently around 73cm long.

Option 1: Keep in current car seats until DD outgrows her infant carrier - based on growth charts this is likely to be around 15 months, December / Jan. Then move her into Minikid 2 and get HBB for DS, at which point he will be 4 and 5 months.

Option 2: Buy Minikid 4, move DS into new seat and DD into Minikid 2 when she outgrows infant carrier.

I've seen the old Minikid 4 on clearance sale which is prompting me to make this decision now. The price of the 4 had put us off when we originally bought the Minikid 2.

DH thinks we should just go for the HBB as DS will be old enough to FF by then but I am leaning towards trying to RF him for another couple of years. It feels wrong to make it about price but at 4 and a half is the reduced risk of rear facing worth the approx. additional £200.

For me it would depend on other risk factors, such as how often you drive, is it fast roads, are you confident safe drivers etc.

Im not a confident driver and plan to put my son in a joie i-traver HBB which scored well on ADAC when he’s just over 4.5 years. Ideally 5.

The britax kidfix HBB has an extra strap between legs and some padding to protect the neck. I might actually upgrade to this one though my husband will think I’m mad :)

The Kidfix is the HBB that I was considering, the extra strap and padding made me feel slightly better about potentially turning to FF.
We live fairly rurally, most of our journeys during the week are 5 min journeys. Obviously longer journeys for holidays, family visits etc.

My husband also thinks I'm mad 🙃

Do you already have a spare RF seat like Joie Stages you use for travel etc? Those can make a good interim step to buy your older child another 6 months/1 year/2 years whatever you want really.

If you don't have one like that, the Graco Extend R129 is on offer at the moment on Boots' website for £72 which is an absolute steal. The 15% off code might even work on top of this. And it's much more portable than the Minikid if you ever needed to put it in another car. The downside of these seats is that the belt path is a bit annoying because it's fitted similar to an infant carrier, but it's not a bad compromise to make if you're keen to keep your eldest RF.

Or Graco Turn2Me i-size (which is the same as Joie 360 Spin GT) is £129 on amazon if you prefer a seat with isofix and a support leg.

You wouldn't necessarily need a second Minikid, because your older child will outgrow the limits of the Minikid before your younger one outgrows a 105cm/18kg limit seat. Any rear facing seat is going to give you pretty much the same protection, especially for a younger child under 2-3 years. And I don't personally think the upgrade from Minikid 2 to Minikid 4 will make very much difference at the top end of ERF unless you have an extremely large child who is off the top of the growth centile charts. The vast majority of children get well past a safe FF age with the older Minikid.

It also might be worth just delaying this decision until your younger child is much closer to the limit of her seat (although TBH I have never seen the Graco Extend at that price, so if that sounds good to you, I'd go for it rather than wait. It's normally about £90-120)

I personally think age 4y5m if the child is sensible and especially when they are on higher centiles so not physically too small for a high back booster - is fine to change. But I also believe in options/information and doing what feels right for you, so if you want to keep your eldest RF longer, the above is what I would suggest.

When you do get to the point of choosing a HBB my main tip would be to try it in the car and check the belt is easy to do up through the correct routing. It's no good choosing it for its features if you go to buckle it up and the buckle is under the edge of the booster seat. Unfortunately becoming more of an issue these days as HBBs are designed to accommodate older children with wider hips (which is great, but no good if you can't easily buckle them in!)

@BertieBotts oh I didn't think about getting an 18kg seat to tie us over, that could be an option. We do actually have a Joie 360 that I think expires Oct 26 (need to check) so that could get us to when DS is 5y2m.
I thought that the Minikid 4 had about 10cm additional back length so it would give quite a bit of additional RF time compared to Minikid 2? Honestly I'm just torn about the benefits of rear facing as long as age 6-7 rather than just until 4-5, most of the info I can find is about RF up until the age of 4.

EU seats don't expire, but Joie do recommend discarding the seat after approx 7 years from first use due to wear and tear. If it's in good condition personally I would be happy pushing it up to the max or a few months past, but I wouldn't pass it on to another family/child after that use.

The Minikid 4 has a longer backrest, but is limited to a standing height of 125cm. So unless your child has a very long torso or you're happy to go over the 125cm, you won't realistically be able to use it much longer. At 75th centile, you're looking at ~6.5 years for a 25kg seat or ~7 years for a 125cm limit (7.5 for 125cm at 50th centile). So you'd get maybe 6-12 months extra, which OK is nothing to sniff at, but at age 6+, it's arguably diminishing returns.

There isn't really any definitive research or evidence to point at to say that RF to age 6-7 is significant. There is the general understanding that everyone is safer travelling RF so if you have a seat which can accommodate it, why not. Certainly there are physics-based reasons why it's safer, I would never suggest that it makes no difference at all. But it's my understanding that the Swedish type seats with the 25kg/125cm limit were really developed with the aim of allowing taller (Swedish!) children to continue RF up to at least age 4, and the older regulation was just created in "bands" so you had Group 1 up to 18kg which is roughly age 3-4, and then Group 2 up to 25kg which is roughly age 6-7, and you couldn't have a seat which stopped somewhere in between. Because a very high centile child can reach 18kg at 3 years old or occasionally younger, and the Swedish recommendation has long been to RF up to the age of 4, they needed RF seats in the higher weight band.

The problem with looking for real life data for children over the age of four is that the number of 4+ year olds in the world who are rear facing is probably absolutely miniscule. Accidents, thankfully, are also rare enough that the chances of getting data which happens to overlap "Child age 4+ in RF seat" and "Car crash serious enough to be included in some kind of database" is very slim. You might be able to find individuals who have experience of a car accident where their 4+ child was in an ERF seat and was unhurt, but that doesn't tell you whether they would have been hurt vs fine in a high back booster seat. And there is unlikely to be enough data to examine the results in real world crashes. We know that HBB makes a difference compared with seatbelt alone or backless booster for 4+ year olds. And children under 4 definitely do better in some kind of harness or even better rear facing (though there isn't good data comparing children age 2-4 in forward facing harness to RF either).

On the positive side, the fact that there is very little information/research about RF/FF/HBB for age 4+ probably means that this is not a big risk group for children. Whereas we do know that seatbelt alone, no restraint, or backless booster is dangerous for this age group.

Thank you for your very detailed responses! If we went with the 7 years for the Joie seat then that would give us another 2 years, so probably DD could be in there until DS maxes out the Minikid 2. If he can last in there until he's 6 I'd feel happy for him to then go in a HBB as his main seat. We may end up getting a HBB in the meantime as a back up for our other car. Thanks again for your help!