Rear facing car seat advice

[andanotherproblem]

So my DD is now 17 months, I don’t drive so the only time she uses a car seat is with my parents if they go out or if we all go out together. The issue is I’ve always heard (never looked into it too much) that they should be rear facing until at least 3. This evening my parents picked me up from work as they were looking after DD and she was forward facing I was so angry but my dad explained that on the actual car seat it says they MUST be forward facing from 15 months and apparently he went into Halfords and they all said the same, when I googled it I can only see they can forward face from 15 months not should. What do I do, is it even safe, do I need to buy a new car seat?

Legally they can FF from 15mo.
The age they can RF to depends on the seat... there will ve a height/weight limit on it.

Generally RF is considered safer, but it needs to be in a seat designed for toddler/preschoolers.

I think your dad might have misunderstood this (image attached) label perhaps? I used to work in a car seat shop and this must be the worst designed label in history because it was CONSTANTLY being misinterpreted by people! I cannot understand how it got past whatever design committees they have. It's an international standard and needs to be understood without reliance on text, but so many people pointed to it and mentioned something that made it clear they had assumed it meant the complete opposite, or some kind of variation on the meaning. Most often they assumed that the entire seat, or the rear facing mode was only suitable up to 15 months, which is totally backwards.

What it means is that babies age 0-15 months are not allowed to be forward facing in this seat by law. This is part of the R129 standard aimed at keeping children rear facing longer. To a minimum of 15 months, but preferably longer than this.

The vast vast majority of R129 car seats bearing this label can accommodate children rear facing much longer - usually up to 105cm which is about age 4.

I would apologise for being angry since I think this is a genuine misunderstanding, and they are trying to use the seat according to the instructions, which is important. Then I'd ask your parents if you can look at the seat manual together to check. I would bet that it says you can keep rear facing longer, most of the manuals actually point out that it's safer and encourage longer use of the rear facing position. I have not come across any R129 seat which has a rear facing limit of 15 months, aside from infant carriers - but infant carriers don't have this label. This label only appears on seats which have the ability to be fitted forward facing, even if they can be rear facing as well.

If they have lost the manual and you can't get hold of a copy, there will be instruction stickers on the side of the seat which show how it should be fitted for different height categories, so you could check this.

Unfortunately Halfords staff frequently can't seem to tell one end of a car seat from the other, so I'd definitely trust the manual over whatever a random sales assistant in store said, even if they all said the same thing.

@BertieBotts

I am currently shopping for car seats for my 1 year old and I notice a lot of car seats (especially the cheaper ones) cannot rear face from 15 months, they are not designed that way. So you need to check what car seat you have and the instructions.

Unfortunately the rear facing car seats for toddlers tend to be more expensive, based on my first brief perusal of John Lewis.

Could you please send me a link to one of these? I would be extremely surprised as I am quite familiar with the car seat market, and have not come across many of these recently, but it would be useful to know. I can really only think of one currently sold seat which is like this now. It did used to be common that the cheaper combination seats could only be used rear facing up to 13kg or sometimes even 10kg only, but these seats have almost entirely disappeared from the market. I wonder if something is being misinterpreted, similar to the symbol/label I shared above.

You are absolutely right that it's important to check the instructions for your individual seat.

There are rear facing seats up to 105cm (approx 4 years, depending on child size) starting from around £80, although the cheapest I can see on the John Lewis website is £130, so it is possible to shop for rear facing seats at the cheaper end of the market. If I can be of any help I would be glad to.

Check the manual for the specific seat you have. If it doesn't allow RF after 15 months, buy a RF seat. Btw it's best to RF for as long as possible, not only until 3. My daughter RFd until she was 7.5, it is definitely possible. Join some car seat safety groups online for seat recommendations if you need a new one.