Everything you thought you knew about car seats is wrong. Okay, not everything, but things have changed and the American Academy of
Pediatrics (AAP) along with the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (NHTSA) announced new guidelines today. And it's big
news! The recommendation is that children rear face
longer and they also changed the details for kids in boosters.
More from The Stir: 7 Rules for Buying & Installing a Car Seat
It was believed that 1 year and 20 pounds was the benchmark for forward facing babies in car seats, despite evidence elsewhere that that was still dangerously early. Now, hopefully, with new guidelines, parents and doctors can get on board and spread the word about the safest practices for children. Here are the details.
New Rear-facing Recommendation: Parents are to keep children rear-facing until 2 years old, or until they reach the maximum height and weight for the seat as noted in the manual.
Safe Kids agrees. Two
years is a goal easily met, considering even some of the lowest cost seats now
rear-face until 40 pounds. When your baby outgrows their infant carrier, that is
when you buy a convertible seat that rear-faces longer, not
a forward-facing seat, which you can put upright up to 30 degrees when kids are
bigger with better head control, often making them take up less space than
infant seats.
New
Boostering Recommendation: Children
should ride in a belt-positioning booster (that means a high-back!) until they
are at least 4 foot, 9 inches, AND 8-12 years old.
Jennifer Hoekstra, the Safe Kids Program Coordinator at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital in Grand Rapids, shared:
In working with
parents, we educate them beyond the law and share with them the best practice
for keeping their child safe. We strongly agree with the new AAP policy and
support the extended rear-facing limits as well as the new booster seat
advice.
It's best to keep
children in their harnessed seat until they outgrow it, which is into elementary years with the height and weight of
most convertible
seats and even harness-to-booster seats
these days. But they will outgrow it and go into a booster, and eventually they
need to meet all points in a 5-point test before they're
ready to sit in a car's seat without a booster of any kind. Remember that these
belts are designed to fit an average adult. Best
practice is also waiting until children are 80-100 pounds as well.
More from The Stir: The Forward-Facing Car Seat Controversy
Continued Beyond that, all kids need to stay out of the front until they're at least 13 years old.
While 2 years or 8 years may now be the minimums, we don't parent by minimums, do we? Buying a high quality (not necessarily high cost!) seat to start, after you do all your research to choose the best seat for your child, can easily help you meet these recommendations.
Make sure you're using
the car seats
correctly, too. There's a lot of intricacies for both harnessed seats and
boosters. When in doubt, find a Safe Kids inspection station or event and get checked out by
a tech. And hopefully more and more pediatricians, with these new
recommendations, will be on board as well, and we can maybe put an end to
vehicle related-injuries being the number one cause of death in kids ages 2-14.
As read on: http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/aaps-new-car-seat-guidelines-change-rear-facing-booster-rules-2466904.html
