Reply to What’s with people getting angry that kids are in carseats longer?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I expect a lot of this depends on your situation. As is often the case with parenting choices, your circumstances dictate a lot of it, and people have a tendency to argue about it as though everyone has the exact same circumstances, but of course they don't. And you see people on here saying "well everyone I know does X" and of course -- everyone you know probably has fairly similar experiences to you.

We live in the city, have one car, drive occasionally but not daily, and have younger kids (under 10). We very rarely give other kids rides because most people, including us, get to most kid-centric events without a car. Outside of us and our parents, the only other car our kids have ridden is the one belonging to our best family friends, who have same age kids.

Since we don't drive a ton, but when we do it's likely to be on a freeway and a longer distance, we take car safety really seriously. My oldest (9) is in a backless booster but this is very recent, younger child is still in a high back booster (7) and we assume will stay there for a while. I have never heard either kid complain about their carseat/booster, worry that their peers are not in them anymore (it is my impression they mostly are, but again, people don't drive a ton), and because we only drive a couple times a week, we don't find it onerous to deal with the car seats when we do.

I anticipate that a family with a different lifestyle, driving frequency, and peer group, might make other choices. That is fine.

I think it's weird that people are judgmental or assume we are insanely conservative because of our carseat choices. I don't get the judgement either way. There are some minimum legal requirements, some expert recommendations, and then families have to make their own choices. [/quote]

I think you’re right that it’s really situation dependent.  I rarely drive and have some anxiety about cars so I can’t imagine having my young kids in any kind of car without a proper car seat.  But I turned my big, tall 2yo forward facing because she was well past the minimum size to be safe forward facing and she got really carsick.  FF helped slightly and meant that the driver could look back easily and check on her if she was throwing up.  I can’t imagine not following the minimum legal requirements but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not following the recommendations exactly to the letter of they don’t work for your family.  Like infant sleep — I actually followed AAP: kids in my room but in their own crib until they were 1, but almost no one I else I know did.  Either the kids moved to their rooms earlier so everyone could sleep better or they ended up cosleeping so everyone could sleep at all.  I don’t think anyone was trying hurt their kids; there are just other considerations besides SIDS to be considered.[/quote]

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