Xander Week 54 - Car Seat Confusion
October 3, 2007
As Xander started getting closer to the one year mark, I began wondering about car seat arrangement. The law in New Hampshire (and from what I can gather, it’s similar in many places) is that children have to be at least one year old, and weight at least 20 pounds before they can ride in a front-facing car seat. That seemed to be a pretty simple rule, and I was looking forward to seeing how Xander reacted to the new perspective.
Then I started to notice things. For example, the two babies who go to Xander’s day care who are 6 months and 1 month older than him both still sit in rear-facing car seats. This confused me a bit. The car seat we have, a Britax Decathlon convertible seat can hold up to 33 pounds rear facing. Why would that extra 13 pounds matter? I also found a few websites that talk about the benefits of keeping kids in rear facing seats as long as possible. CarSafety.org is an excellent place for information on this subject. They talk about why rear-facing car seats are better, and what can happen during car crashes in rear vs. front facing seats. This site also says that the American Association of Pediatrics recommends keeping kids rear facing for as long as possible. The AAP recommends that kids be at least 20 pounds and 1 year old. They say that IF your seat allows for higher weights, and your kid’s head is at least an inch below the top of the seat, then rear facing allows for “optimal protection”.
Finally, I spoke with our doctor. He said that it is fine for Xander to sit front-facing, as children’s center of gravity becomes lower after they reach 1 year and are the appropriate weight. He explained that the higher center of gravity is the concern for babies, but as that lowers, the need to sit in a rear-facing seat also lowers. He also said that if possible, the center back seat is the safest.
Since Xander is now 23 pounds, and almost 30 inches tall, we decided to flip his seat around to front-facing. He meets all of the requirements, and his legs were starting to scrunch up in the rear-facing position. Xander seems to enjoy the front-facing position, and we can certainly interact more easily with him this way. He has truly become a toddler in the past few weeks, and the change is amazing!
Just a quick comment about this picture - this was taken after Xander’s birthday party - he slept for maybe 45 minutes that morning, and this was 5pm with no nap, and we were on our way to another party - he was worn out, but his mood was still happy!