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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’ve seen a lot of anger and animosity from (mostly) older folks regarding current guidelines for child passenger safety.

My 3.5-year-old is rear-facing carseat and my 7-year-old is in a backed booster with a harness.  For some reason my father and father-in-law are extremely bothered by this.   When I told my dad that both boys will be in some type of booster in the back seat until they’re 4’11” or 12 (whichever comes first) his head spun and he let out a guttural groan like he had been punched in the stomach.

We follow the recommendations of the NHTSA, CDC’s Child Passenger Safety and our pediatricians office.  I don’t see a reason not to? [b] My kids have never complained.  [/b]They are always comfortable.  They’re petite for their age and aren’t prone to car sickness so thank God I don’t have to worry about queasiness with the rear facing.  They both will fall asleep in the car if the drive is longer than 30 minutes and so I don’t have to worry about them slumping over.  Their peers are in similar carseats and booster seats and the older has never mentioned being embarrassed. Why not?  Car accidents and guns are the two leading cause of deaths for children under 16 and I really have very little control about either but if I can give my children a decreased chance of serious injury or death in the event of a car accident why not?

So many older people seem to have survivors bias about it all.

“Back in my day we just sat in the back of the car and we turned out fine!”  Well, I’m sure many didn’t and I don’t think car fatalities were nearly as common in the 1950s.

Same thing with helmets.  Drives my dad crazy!  “You never wore a helmet growing up and you were fine!”

Yeah.  Thank God I didn’t crash and hit my head.  I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you because I could’ve had a TBI.  My kids gonna wear a helmet.  Why on earth would they not?  So they can look cooler to a bunch of 65-year-old men?

And I’ve seen ads for carseats and booster seats on social media and the comments are similar (yes, I know Facebook comments are always going to be the worst humanity has to offer).  But there are so many people actually ANGRY that a 8-year-old is in a booster.  Like angry and throwing out wild theories, “they’re trying to make our kids soft!”  “This is why men can’t be men anymore!!”  Just true insanity.

Why on earth does decreasing the chances of your kid being seriously injured or killed seem to trigger an entire generation?
[/quote]

Because they’re still little. Your oldest is 7? When he’s in 4th grade, get back to us and let us know how he feels about climbing into a booster seat in front of his friends from school.[/quote]

Or when he wants to ride home with a friend from sports or go with his friends somewhere- and mom either says no it starts uninstalling and installing booster seats in the other parent’s car [/quote]

Boosters for older kids are super easy to move to a new car— I have a ride to one of my DD’s friends the other day and we literally handed her booster through the window and had it installed in 5 seconds.

Also, it’s common for older kids to sometimes ride without a booster if they are  at that borderline size where a booster is safest but it’s not crazy for them to ride without them. Our rule is that definitely a booster if the car is getting on the freeway or will be exceeding 35 mph. But we sometimes take Lyfts or let our kid ride in a family member’s car without a booster if they are just driving somewhere nearby. You don’t have to worry about the kind of high speed accident in those situations, just lower speed accidents where the risk is lower and the child is not likely to be thrown forward at a high rate of speed.

After age 7 or so (depending on kid’s size) following the guidelines isn’t much of a hassle. And the kids don’t complain about it when all their friends are in boosters too.[/quote]

Disagree.  High back boosters aren’t a pass through the window type thing.  And when you are handing your 11 yr old booster seat over to his friend’s mom and putting it their car, meanwhile, their 11 yr old and his 9 yr old sibling both ride without- it is noticed.  Multiple this my pretty much every friend he has and he will feel not so great about you wanting to insist on a booster every time [/quote]

I'm not one of the posters who would put an 11 yr old in a high back booster -- there is no recommendation to do so.

There are two reasons for car seats/boosters. One is to position a child so that in the case of a collision, they are in the safest possible position for surviving and minimizing injury. That's why kids are supposed to rear face until they are too tall to do so safely -- that position is safer in a collision. It's also why it's recommended for kids to use boosters of some kind until they are tall enough, because a child using seat belt that does not cross their chest and lap in the right places is at much higher risk of death or injury.

The other reason for car seats/boosters is that children are not capable of staying correctly positioned in a regular seat belt, even assuming they are the correct height for it, until a certain level of maturity. Harnesses on very young kids solve this problem because a harness locks a child's body into place, so no amount of squirming, sleeping, or other movement in a properly fitted harness will displace the child. Even boosters that convert from harness to regular seat belt help with this, because the seat belt will go through guides on the booster that keep it in place. But for older kids, they do eventually gain the maturity to use a normal shoulder/lap seatbelt without sliding out of it, making a backless booster perfectly fine.

So there is no reason to put an 11 year old in a high back booster unless they are both undersized for their age and have developmental issues that make it hard for them to sit properly in a normal seat belt. Most 11 year olds need, at most, a small height boost so that the belt positions correctly. Some 11 year olds are tall enough to not even need this. It's really not that big of a deal to move a backless booster to another car (I see kids carrying them onto planes themselves all the time, including kids as old s 9/10) -- it's a very minor inconvenience.

Anyone suggesting a backless booster past the age of 7 or 8 either (1) has a kid with special needs that makes that appropriate, or (2) is overzealous to the point of not really understanding why carseats/boosters improve safety. This is a far outlier position even among advocates of proper carseat/booster use.[/quote]

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