How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

I have the Britax Regent for Ava (6) and Brody (2). It holds up to eighty pounds and almost 5 feet tall with the 5 point harness. They are huge, weigh a ton and take up the entire rear seat of my car- no one can even squeeze between them.

Ava's is good for another 2 years. I plan on using it until then, but she is starting to think things are "babyish", so I'm not sure how much longer she will willingly sit in it.

Most of her friends use nothing- not a car seat or even a booster. Am I ridiculous??? I feel that I will use it for as long as possible- I just feel safer.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

DS is 6 and using a Graco Turbobooster high back booster seat. In my DH's car, he's using a backless booster (just the seat), but he is rarely in DH's car.

My DD is 4 and she is still using her Britax Marathon. I wasn't planning on taking her out of it any time soon, but lately she has been asking me for a big girl carseat like her brother has (the Graco highback booster seat).

I have seen plenty of my DS's friends (6 years of age or so) get in cars with no booster seats..... My kids will be in booster seats as long as I want them in one!

Message edited 8/16/2010 10:06:22 PM.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

DD is 5.5 and DS is 4 and they are still in their Britax Marathon convertable seats. It goes up to 65 lbs and 49" which they haven't hit and they haven't complained yet so I'm keeping them in there for now.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

http://www.nhtsa.gov/Safety/Booster-Seats

DC should be in a booster until they are at least 8 years old.

We put DS in a backless booster on his 6th b-day, and he'll be in it until he is 8+ and tall enough to have the seatbelt lay across his chest the correct way to protect him in an accident.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

DS just turned 7 his is 48in tall and about 50 lbs. He is in the Greco turbobooster without the back and starting to complain that "it is so embarrassing" to have to use a seat. The only time he complains is when there are friends around so I think he must have been teased a little. I just tell him that its safer and that he has to eat more so he will grow taller and get heavier so he dosent need the seat anymore.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

9 years old no seat. She was out of any kind of seat at about 6 1/2 and she is very tall.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

My older DD turns five next month and has been using the Graco TurboBooster (with the back on) for the last two months or so...

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

I have a very small, skinny 6.5 year old and an average sized 5 year old both in high backed boosters. They will stay in boosters until they are 8. I never, EVER want to think "...if only I had..."

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

Noah is 7. He weighs 52lbs and he is about 43 inches. He is in a 5 point harness for my car and a full booster in Rob's car.

Robbie is 9. He is about 54 inches and 73lbs and uses the booster bottom only in my car and Rob's car because he no longer fits the ones with the seat backs.

Robbie has argued with me about using a booster - but he knows that until that rear seatbelt fits his shoulders properly, he will be in a booster - no questions. Noah doesn't love being in the 5 point harness - but he also knows better than to argue about it.

Message edited 8/17/2010 10:17:55 AM.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

Nick is 9 and hasn't been in a booster since he was 5 1/2. Guess I'm a bad mom but the seatbelt fit across his shoulders (he's really tall) so I went for it.

Becky is 4 and still in a full 5 point harness. SHe is nowhere near meeting the height requirement.

Just out of curiousity, since there are always so many posts here and on parenting about car seats, has anyone ever read the Freakonomics study about kids, car seats, and car seat companies? I will try to find it online to cut & paste.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

Here it is.... sorry, it's long.



The Seat-Belt Solution By STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT
A Car-Seat Crash Test

On a recent Monday morning, nearly 20 police officers gathered in Clarkstown, N.Y., for a four-day seminar. They had assembled to fight one of modernity's great scourges: child deaths in motor-vehicle crashes. Each officer was given a 345-page training manual issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). At seminar's end, each would be certified as a ''child passenger safety technician,'' which primarily means that they would be experts in the installation and use of child car seats.

Why does it take four days to learn about car seats? Because any given seat is a tangle of straps, tethers and harnesses built by one of dozens of manufacturers whose products must be secured by the diverse seat-belt configurations of any passenger vehicle sold in the United States. According to the NHTSA manual, more than 80 percent of car seats are improperly installed.

So over the course of those four days, there were many questions to be answered. But one question about car seats is rarely even asked: How well do they actually work?

They certainly have the hallmarks of an effective piece of safety equipment: big and bulky, federally regulated, hard to install and expensive. (You can easily spend $200 on a car seat.) And NHTSA data seem to show that car seats are indeed a remarkable lifesaver. Although motor-vehicle crashes are still the top killer among children from 2 to 14, fatality rates have fallen steadily in recent decades -- a drop that coincides with the rise of car-seat use. Perhaps the single most compelling statistic about car seats in the NHTSA manual was this one: ''They are 54 percent effective in reducing deaths for children ages 1 to 4 in passenger cars.''

But 54 percent effective compared with what? The answer, it turns out, is this: Compared with a child's riding completely unrestrained. There is another mode of restraint, meanwhile, that doesn't cost $200 or require a four-day course to master: seat belts.

For children younger than roughly 24 months, seat belts plainly won't do. For them, a car seat represents the best practical way to ride securely, and it is certainly an improvement over the days of riding shotgun on mom's lap. But what about older children? Is it possible that seat belts might afford them the same protection as car seats?

The answer can be found in a trove of government data called the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), which compiles police reports on all fatal crashes in the U.S. since 1975. These data include every imaginable variable in a crash, including whether the occupants were restrained and how.

Even a quick look at the FARS data reveals a striking result: among children 2 and older, the death rate is no lower for those traveling in any kind of car seat than for those wearing seat belts. There are many reasons, of course, that this raw data might be misleading. Perhaps kids in car seats are, on average, in worse wrecks. Or maybe their parents drive smaller cars, which might provide less protection.

But no matter what you control for in the FARS data, the results don't change. In recent crashes and old ones, in big vehicles and small, in one-car crashes and multiple-vehicle crashes, there is no evidence that car seats do a better job than seat belts in saving the lives of children older than 2. (In certain kinds of crashes -- rear-enders, for instance -- car seats actually perform worse.) The real answer to why child auto fatalities have been falling seems to be that more and more children are restrained in some way. Many of them happen to be restrained in car seats, since that is what the government mandates, but if the government instead mandated proper seat-belt use for children, they would likely do just as well / without the layers of expense, regulation and anxiety associated with car seats.

NHTSA, however, has been pushing the car-seat movement ever further. The agency now advocates that all older children (usually starting at about age 4) ride in booster seats, which boost a child to a height where the adult lap-and-shoulder belts fit properly. Could this be a step in the wrong direction? In 2001, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety sent NHTSA a memo warning that its booster-seat recommendations were ''getting ahead of science and regulations'' and that certain booster seats ''did not improve belt fit, and some actually worsened the fit.''

If car seats and booster seats are shown in the FARS data to be no more effective than seat belts, might it be because so many of them are improperly installed? To find out, we contacted an independent lab that conducts crash tests. The idea was simple: compare properly installed car seats with properly used standard seat belts. We commissioned two crash tests: a 3-year-old-sized dummy in a car seat versus a 3-year-old dummy in lap-and-shoulder belt; and a 6-year-old-sized dummy in a booster seat versus a 6-year-old dummy in lap-and-shoulder belt.

The conditions of the test ensured that the seats would perform optimally: they were strapped to old-fashioned bench-style seats (which give a flush fit) by an experienced engineer (who is presumably more competent than the average parent). The dummies in the seat belts were also positioned optimally, sitting upright and flush.

The chore was gruesome, from start to finish. Each dummy, dressed in shorts, T-shirt and sneakers, had a skein of wires snaking out of his body to measure head and chest damage. The pneumatic sled was fired backward with a frightening bang, simulating a 30 m.p.h. frontal crash; on impact, the dummy's head, legs and arms jerked forward, fingers flailing in the air, and then the head recoiled.

Within minutes, we had some data. Though the lap-and-shoulder belts rode too high on the 3-year-old dummy, the head- and chest-impact data were only nominally higher than that for the 3-year-old in the car seat; according to federal standards, most likely neither child would have been injured. In the second test, the 6-year-old in the booster and the 6-year-old in the seat belt produced virtually identical numbers. Again, most likely neither one would have been injured.

These tests don't actually prove much. The sample was too small, the circumstances were too controlled and the sensors didn't measure neck or abdominal injuries, which child-safety advocates say are worse with seat belts. What matter are the crash data from the real world, where one 4-year-old in a lap-and-shoulder belt may find the shoulder belt so irritating that he puts it behind his back and another 4-year-old may be in a poorly installed car seat. And when it comes to real-world situations, the FARS data are extremely compelling.

So if car seats and booster seats aren't the safety miracle that parents have been taught to believe, what should they do? The most important thing, certainly, is to make sure that children always ride with some kind of restraint -- and, depending on your state, a car seat or booster seat may be the only legal option. On a broader level, though, it might be worth asking this question: Considering that Americans spend a few hundred million dollars annually on complicated contraptions that may not add much lifesaving value, how much better off might we be if that money was spent to make existing seat belts fit children? Some automakers do in fact make integrated child seats (in which, for example, the car's seat back flips down for the child to sit on); other solutions might include lap-and-shoulder belts that vertically adjust to fit children, or even a built-in five-point harness.

It may be that the ultimate benefit of car seats and booster seats is that they force children to sit still in the back seat. If so, perhaps there is a different contraption that could help accomplish the same goal for roughly the same price: a back-seat DVD player.


Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt are the authors of ''Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.''

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

Lauren is 6 and in the Britax Booster (has back-car strap) in DH's truck she uses a backless.
Audrina is 2.5 and in a Graco convertable.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

DD turned 4 in June. She weighs 39 lbs and is 41.5 inches. I have her in a 5 pt harness Graco Nautilus. It is a 5 pt harness to 65 lbs, I love that seat and plan to keep her in the 5 pt harness for a loong time.

My boyfriends son is turning 8 this month and he uses a backless booster.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

My boys are 5 and 3. 3 yr old is in 5 poitn harness convertible car seat (forward facing of course). He'll be there for at least a year or so more. 5 yr old is in high back Graco booster seat. Been in it since he is 4 yrs old. Before that the 5 point harness seat (coverted to a booster seat) recommended going to lap belt after 40lbs or 43 inches. He was over 40lbs and 42.5 in at 4 so he needed to be moved out as the 5 point harness was not supportive of his weight. Didn't feel that seat was safe with lap belt so moved him to a Graco booster which has worked out great. He is on the taller but still fine for the high back. I see so many kids even my son's age with no booster who are much smaller than my son...kills me....even had parents tell me that they don't get the point of a booster. I tried to causally explain but you can tell they could care less about it.

Message edited 8/18/2010 8:49:08 AM.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

I know I'm not there yet - but I'm curious - I could be wrong but I thought that NYS law was children under 8 had to be in at least a booster - 8 and older it was recommended that they should be 4'9" and at least 100 lbs. - But I see people saying that 5 and 6 year olds aren't in boosters - so isn't that against the law?

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

DS1 is 7 and uses the Turbobooster (backless) and DS2 is 4.5 and sits on the integrated booster in our SUV.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

Message edited 8/18/2010 9:39:20 PM.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

DD is 5 & tall for her age. She rides in a backless booster.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

As far as the DVD comment, I think that was meant to be funny. The authors write in a humorous way, and this was only a brief summary of their research for a general audience. The actual research was very dry and published in a peer reviewed journal.

The article was meant to convey that "safety" is misleading in relation to booster seats for several reasons.

1) The information that the carseat manufacturers give out is misleading. The research shows that carseats are more effective at preventing fatalities when compared to children who are completely unrestrained (no seat belt or car seat at all) in the car. Children who are in a booster seat and children who are wearing a seat belt fare similarly in car accidents.

2) Car seat manufacturers have repeatedly been warned about getting ahead of science as far as booster seats go. According to the data, many booster seats actually make belts fit worse.

And as far as what you quoted to the effect of the research "not proving much," the author is referring to the private experiments run in the crash test lab. The rest of the article is referring to the federally compiled FARS data, which is pretty irrefutable.

That being said, my oldest is big enough to wear a seatbelt only, and the younger two are in seatbelts. I think it is interesting to provide another side of the story, especially when we are being mandated to do something that is expensive and encouraged by a big lobby, namely car seat manufacturers.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

Both my 5 year old and my 6 year old are in a high back booster and will remain until they are at least 8 years old AND the height requirement.

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?

Re: How old is your child and are they in a car seat/booster on any kind?