Car seats - how long did you rear face your child for?

[ShutterHaze]

I know a lot of people say “as long as possible”, but interested to hear what people have done in practice!

I think that’s what I’m finding hard to figure out. I feel like online the norm is much older than “average”, which makes it hard to ascertain what’s best. Did you have to get a new car seat to change from RF to FF? Need to get a new car sear for my almost 3 year old. Still want them to be RF but not sure how long they will be doing that for. The internet makes me feel like it’ll be for another few years, whereas I don’t know whether to just get something that will last for a year or so then reassess…

Is there a law now? Mine are 22, 17 and 14 and we front faced them as soon as they outgrew the tiny baby one, I guess around 4 months old. That’s what everyone I knew did then

My first was only about 9 months old. She outgrew the baby one and I just bought a cybex isofix one that had great reviews. I didn’t actually know much about rear facing. It wasn’t spoke of much at that time. I did buy a seat that could rear faced for longer with my second child. She started majorly kicking off about it at some point between 2 1/2 and 3. So I let her front face from then on.

Currently got 2y5m and 4y7m rear facing. Eldest will max her spin seat at around 5. Youngest will max his around 3 and a half. I'm undecided whether to move eldest to erf or hbb. Youngest will need erf as 3 and a half is too young for me to hbb.

@Esssa Can I ask what brand spin seat you have and whether you’d recommends please?

I'm going for age 4 with my two, and yes - by my friends' standards I've rear faced for a long time, by MN standards I'm well below par I'm sure 😅

Put my granddaughter in front facing in my car when she was about 20 months, just after her mum did in her car. She loves forward facing. Didn’t even consider keeping her rear facing. I find that weird but then I’m old 🤷‍♀️

About a year for all 3 of mine. But two of them are adults now, and one is 13. It wasn't really a thing I knew about when they were very small.

Just after 3, high centile child outgrew the swivel seat we had for weight and height. The ERF seats were very expensive for only another couple of years use. Bought a Britax Romer HBB that should last until we no longer need a car seat.

Of course if you look online on the car seat safety Facebook pages there will be people who tell you they still rear face their 25 year old, 6ft 2 rugby player son.

15 months is the law. But medical science proves it should be much older.

In reality I think the majority of families do it much younger than those in this thread, like before 2yo. We just don't want to say so because we get piled on.

I think you have to make decisions that work for you and your kids.

RF vs FF doesn't change the likelihood of a crash, only the severity. Statistically, cycling on the road is going to be worse in terms of severity in the unlikely event of a crash, but I don't see parents getting slated for having their kids in one of those cargo bikes. it's understood that the benefits make the risk worth it. The main benefit is ease and convenience (not needing to park on the school run, beating the traffic).

But if anyone on a RF vs FF thread cites ease, convenience as a reason, they get accused of not caring about safety.

I never did it. I get car sick facing the wrong direction of travel so assumed DD would be the same.

Have a look at the Swedish plus tested seats. My two had swivel seats but much preferred the fixed rear facing seats I moved them into after. The sides are lower than with the swivelling ones so the children can get in more easily.

Mine were 7 and 6 when we switched. They were definitely the only ones among their classmates still rearfacing at this age. I couldn't care less what other people think, I did what I felt was safest for my two.

4 years for both of mine. Most people I know turned earlier. If I have another child I'll probably rf until a 25kg seat is outgrown but I bought a 18kg RF seat before I knew 25kg existed.

I think eldest age 15 sbout 14 months middle child about 2.5 (13 now) youngest till about four and a half (now 10). I think like lots of things safety advice has changed over the years. Also cars. When eldest was born I didn’t even have a car so it was just car seat from travel system. Then when outgrew to forward facing. I lived in Amsterdam at the time and there was a thriving trade in car seats being passed around as not that many people in my circle drove. We all had a baby seat on the bike handlebars though!

4.5 with both of them. That’s about when they reached the weight limit for the seat to safely attach as RF. We moved to a high back booster then. I think the more modern seats (this was quite a few years ago now when ERF was less common in the UK) can RF to much higher weights.

Things have changed a lot with car seats over the years. My eldest two (now 26) went FF at 11 months when they hit the weight for their baby seats and I had a proper dilemma when they hit 9 months as that was "the age" at the time, but as they were twins and small I figured it was better to wait until they hit the weight requirement. Some people thought I was bonkers and was "babying" them.

My youngest had to go FF at 2.5 because tubes, wires and often oxygen canisters just didn't work RF.

DN (we are his guardians) is 3.5, but he's tiny so I think we'll likely be able to RF until he's 7/8 ish. We may have to re-think depending on DD - her current wheelchair can go in the boot, but her next one will be much bigger, and lifting her into the car may stop being possible so space will be very different.

I was just thinking that. I didn’t even have a cargo bike I had a baby seat thst clipped onto the handlebars. Forward facing too. In the event of a crash I’m sure poor DS would of been toast. However I lived in Amsterdam it was a safe, speedy and cheap way to get around. It felt like the benefits outweighed the risks.

I think we switched to forward facing when my eldest was 5.

My youngest is nearly 4 and he’s still rear facing. No plan to forward face for the foreseeable.

DD1 was five and DD2 unfortunately 2 as like the person you’ve quoted so gets really car sick and forward facing made it so much better.
our seats could go either RF or FF and I’m so glad I bought ones that could.

she is quite small so I did manage to keep her in the seat, and therefore in a five point harness until she was 6. Was really hard when they started school and all their friends were in high backed boosters…but I wouldn’t budge.

3 and a bit.

When she hit the 18kg weight limit on her rear facing seats.

Tried various ERF seats, but couldn’t find a solution that was feasible for the adult driver and passenger and didn’t involve hugely compromising the driving position or visibility.

And being a dull
person who actually understands risk management, I wasn’t going to compromise on things that influenced how likely I was to have an accident, in favour of something that only became relevant IF there was an accident.

DD1 was 4, DD2 was 5.

Mine was 5. I've seen some dreadful injuries in children with long legs bent up for extended rear facing, to me there is a point where it seems to become less safe. That's just my opinion based on what I've seen though, I think probably because shunt accidents from the rear are more common than head on.

2 years in one car seat and 5 years in the main car seat.
The spare seat we had in my partners car was more fiddly and didn't work that well rear facing once she reached the weight that we couldn't have the wedge in place. So we moved her forwards and avoid using this seat if we didn't have too. It was used once or twice a week on 10 minutes journeys if my partner was doing the nursery pick up. She was happy to do rear facing in one car seat and forward in the other.
We had a 360 spin seat as the main seat which was in my car or if we were doing a long journey in my partners car we would move it to his car. As she turned 5 she asked to go forward facing. I was due our second within a few weeks when she would be moved to a high backed booster anyway so we didn't see a problem in her being turned forward slightly earlier. She's short so only just gone over 100 cm so theoretically she could have stayed rear facing for probably another 9-12 months before reaching the height criteria of her spin seat if we hadn't have needed it for the baby.

We were pragmatic about rear facing. If it had been more practical in the spare car seat we would have continued for longer and if it wasn't practical in the main seat we would have stopped earlier.

We could have looked into extended rear facing seats which would have enabled us to rear faced her until 8-9 in a 25kg chair or 11-12 in a 36kg chair but that felt excessive. The only downside to her forward facing is that even at 5 she's a terrible backseat driver! 😂