Car Seat

By law depending on the seat it’s either when baby is 15 months or 9kg. But it’s actually much safer for children to rear face until around 5 years old.

i thought i was tripping. I thought it was 2 years old.

Depends on where you are, it's 2yo minimum regardless of height or weight here. After 2yo then it depends on the seat. The longer the better if your seat allows.

That being said my 2y4m son is forward facing in my car because the shape of his seat and my door made it so hard to get him in without cracking his head on the door frame

My LG is 15 months and I’ll be having her car seat rear facing until she’s at least 2. All car seats will have instructions on about the safest way to face your child in that particular seat according to weight. A baby of 11 months and below should not be in a front facing car seat, ever. It’s just not safe. The best advice is to keep them rear facing for as long as you can. It’s just a lot safer. And get a baby car mirror so you can glance in your rear view mirror to check on them and you can see their face.

Ah, I’m in the UK, it could be different where you are

forward facing under 11 months old 😳😳 im sorry to be blunt but that’s a death sentence if they were to crash. children should be rearfacing to an absoloute minimum of 2 years but ideally up to 4 years if you can get a car seat with higher rearfacing limits.

i’m in the UK and my son’s seat rearfaces to 25kg which for him is around 5/6 years old.

Not until age 5 at the earliest

@Abby I'm in the UK and my daughters seat rear faces to 36kg, she will be rear facing as long as possible

Between 5-6 years old

so i read something about the mirrors being able to burn the babies from the glare and the sun thats why i havent gotten one

Oh wow. I hadn’t heard about that!

I live in the uk and basically every day is cloudy/overcast with very little direct sunlight, but it’s definitely something I’ll be aware of now and be looking out for on days when the sun is out!

As long as possible! Depending on weight/ height.

At least the age of 5 ☺️

My almost four year old is rear facing and we're looking at getting a new car seat so he can do so for longer. It's much safer!

the britax romer safeway M Rear faces to 36kg, and is pretty good price wise, I got ours for £200 on an offer but they are usually £270 so not overly expensive compared to some that aren't as safe or long lasting (my daughter was 7 months when we got ours, she's only 10 months ths now so we have many years of use ahead)

I won’t FF till 5.

It’s my job to crash test stuff and I see the stats on children KSIs. I don’t need those horrors in my own life.

thank you! That one is on my radar! We have the Joie Stages at the moment but he's almost at the rear facing limit for it as he's quite a high centile child.

I think the longer they are ready facing the safer

5 years old

My friends daughter is a year and a half and is still rear facing

So how do I tell her he should still be facing the rear. Or does she not care? I know they had to have mentioned it at the drs appointments.

I had my oldest rear facing until age 2, then turned him. I think about it now and how dangerous I feel like that was and I’m SO grateful that nothing happened!!! My middle I had RF until age 4.5 when she maxed out on the weight limit of the seat RFing. My youngest will be 4 next month and is still RFing and will continue to do so until she also maxes out the seat limits.
My oldest didn’t switch over to a HB booster until he was like 8! He’s also a MAJOR shrimp so he was able to go that long until he outgrew the harness. I, just this morning, lifted my middle’s straps to their highest position so it looks like she will be switching to a HB booster a bit earlier than her big bro (she’ll be 7 in July). In reality, even full grown adults would be safer in 5 point harnesses (there’s a reason they’re used in race cars!). Use everything you can until you hit the max limits is my philosophy. The damage that could potentially come from the risk is just FAR too great to even take that (contd)

risk to me.
I hear you in not knowing how to bring that up to another mama. The way that I have gone about it in the past is to recommend that they post pix of kiddo’s and the cat seats that they’re in to the Facebook group’Car Seats for the Littles’ because they can help make sure that everything is all on the up and up and that everything is as safe as possible for kiddo. Sometimes it’s just a matter of ignorance and not knowing any better. And, unfortunately, sometimes, it’s a lack of caring about kiddos. 😢😭
I (used to!!!) have a friend when my oldest was 8, and he was SO excited about transitioning to a high back booster! And he mentioned it to her after their shared dance class and the mom JOKINGLY started talking about what a bad mom she was for having her 5 year old in a backless booster(to be fair, her 5 year old was a hefty girl and probably could have been in a HIGH BACK booster, but definitely NOT a BACKLESS booster!!) I wasn’t going to say anything to that because (contd.)

that was one was close *ish* to a judgement call. But she also had a 2 year old, my youngest was a 2 year old as well (and not only still in a 5 point harness, but still rear facing as well!), and my babies are all pretty small. I just grow ‘em little. But this little boy she had, was TINY!!! And she (literally!) let him run around a construction site barefoot!!! That was bad enough, but I hadn’t seen their car set up, so I had no idea, but then she starts JOKING AROUND (once again) about how she’s a REALLY bad mom because he…… WAS ALSO IN A BACKLESS BOOSTER!!!!! I. Was. In. SHOCK!!! I gave her the info about the FB group and had I known ANYTHING about this woman (we literally just talked during our kids dance classes until we quit the studio right around the same time, for a number of reasons), I would have called the authorities!!! That’s flat out illegal and just SO!!!! incredibly dangerous it scares me. And the fact of the matter is, that she was joking about it. So she (contd.)

CLEARLY knew how wrong it was…. Yet continued to do so. I kind of tried to talk to her about it a little, but her reasoning was that they “couldn’t afford” a full size car seat for him. Yet, these dance lessons were INSANELY, RIDICULOUSLY, OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive (lots of ‘hidden fees’ and whatnot kept popping up. A HUGE reason why we quit. And she continued on paying for those every month, so she clearly wasn’t THAT broke. But it showed where her priorities lie. Hence why I chose to never ask for her phone number prior to quitting dance. There was no way that I could spend time with them knowing what I know about her intentionality of putting that tiny little boy into danger every time they got in that car (and they lived a SIGNIFICANT distance away), and from the amount of accidents she told me she’d had, she was clearly a terrible driver as well. That one, to this day, keeps me up at night. I should have taken it further and investigated more so I could have called the authorities. 😢

He’s 4 turning 5 and we rear faced over the Xmas holidays. Don’t compare. You do you. There will ALWAYS be babies that FF young for whatever reason but doesn’t mean you have to 💁🏻‍♀️

yes