I think as parents, we have a strong desire to protect our children. One way we can protect our precious kiddos is to properly follow car seat safety guidelines. I know, they are a pain in the butt sometimes and it takes way more time to take off your child's coat, hook them into a five point harness, and make sure it is tight enough and the chest clip is sitting high enough. But, heaven forbid, if you end up in a crash, those extra few minutes could save their life. There are times that I'm in the grocery store or out in public and I see a sweet baby buckled up in their seat, with their coat on and their chest clip is well.......not on their chest. I of course get concerned for their safety but for fear of looking like a rude know it all, I keep my mouth shut. I'm not sure what the correct way to go about saying "Excuse me, but your baby isn't buckled in correctly," is. I know if I didn't know the car seat safety rules, I would appreciate someone letting me know how to keep my child more safe but I also know that I could really tick someone off by making them feel like they are not a good parent. So I'm hoping that this post can help to inform parents, who are not aware of the guidelines, what the guidelines really are, and not offend too many people in the process!
I would have never thought about a coat not being safe to wear in a car seat if I had not seen a video explaining how, on impact, the coat can decompress and the straps you thought were tight, really aren't, and your child can be thrown from their car seat. Now, to me, knowing that information makes me absolutely not care about the time I'm saving by leaving my child in their coat and buckling them into their seat. If you are worried about them getting cold, just buckle them in, then cover them with a blanket (what I do with Owen since he's little) or put their coat on them backwards after they are buckled in (what I do with Gavin). Here's a video explaining why you should not buckle up your kids with their coat still on. Uhttp://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LRKi8nUlM4U. She does an awesome job explaining everything and even hits on my next point.
The other big deal when it comes to actually buckling your child in is making sure the straps are tight enough (you can't pinch any slack between your pointer finger and thumb) and in the correct position in relation to your child's shoulders (below shoulders for rear facing and at or above for forward facing) and the chest clip is in the right position (armpit level). Here's a video about why its important for the chest clip to be positioned right across the chest. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRbNSWVVUm8.
I think it's also super important to make sure your child is in the correct seat for their height/weight. The AAP now recommends that your child should stay rear facing until at LEAST two or until they outgrow the height/weight recommendations of your car seat (which should be in the owners manual or the car seat manufacturers website). Once they outgrow the height/weight recommendations for rear facing they should be moved to a forward facing five point harness car seat. Once they outgrow those recommendations (usually not until at LEAST four) they can be moved to a booster seat/seatbelt combination. The five point harness is still the safest for them and they should stay in that car seat until they have outgrown it (ours goes up to 65 pounds). I know it's so much easier to strap them into their car seat with the seatbelt but once again, is the few seconds it takes to latch that five point harness worth saving your child's life? I think YES! Here's a great illustration of all this information in one place. http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/images/child_passenger_safety/VS_cps_image_fullsize.jpg
All of this really doesn't matter if your car seat isn't installed correctly into your car so make sure you either take it somewhere that is certified to install car seats (police station) or you watch a video and read all the guidelines on how to properly install a car seat. I am also very aware of anyone who takes my kids in the car (which isn't too often without me) knowing the car seat rules. I'm forever telling my parents "push that chest clip higher." I would feel absolutely terrible and never be able to forgive myself if something happened to one of my boys, knowing that it could have been prevented by following the simple guidelines of proper car seat safety. I hope that if you didn't know or forgot some or all of these rules before, you can now implement them and keep your babies safer in their seat! There are so many videos on you tube you can reference if you are still wondering about the proper way to buckle your kiddo in or you can google the AAP guidelines for car seats.
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