Toddler Booster Seats

Buckle 'Em Up Safely with New Car Seat Guidelines

Eight-years old or 80 pounds has been the rule for ditching the booster seat in New Jersey, but new federal guidelines challenge this regulation and suggest our children can be safer.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the American Academy of Pediatrics recently announced new car seat guidelines recommending that children remain in booster seats until they reach 4 feet, 9 inches which can be between the ages of 8 and 12.

My 10-year-olds are small, and to their chagrin, they still use booster seats. Without the added boost, the seat belt runs along their ears and neck and just doesn’t fit right. Our pediatrician told me to keep them in the seats until they were tall enough to use the shoulder and lap belts comfortably.

Their friends have commented that they still have “baby seats” and other moms look at me like I’m crazy but keeping my kids safe is worth a little embarrassment.

David Strickland, an NHTSA administrator, was quoted on abcnews.com saying, "Traffic crashes are the largest killer of children, period. Just because your child may not be happy about having to be in a booster seat a little bit longer, I think you would rather have to deal with that situation than having your child sustain an injury that could have been avoided if they were in a properly fitted restraint."

If you are unsure whether or not your child is strapped into the adult seat belts correctly, the NHTSA offers the following information regarding properly fitted seat belts:

“Children who reach a height of 4 feet, 9 inches before their 8th birthday may be ready for adult safety belts. They can move to a safety belt when they can place their back firmly against the vehicle seat back cushion with their knees bent over the vehicle seat cushion. The lap belt must fit low and tight across the child's upper thighs. The shoulder belt should rest over the shoulder and across the chest. Never put the shoulder belt under the arm or behind the child's back.”

In addition to the recommendations for older kids, the new guidelines also advise parents to keep infants in rear facing car seats until the age of 2. In a recent study, the NHTSA found that rear facing car seats are more effective in protecting infants and toddlers from serious injury than front facing car seats.

Again, this is hard to swallow for many parents who look forward to seeing their child in the rear view mirror.

Tubby U.S. Toddlers Too Fat For Booster Seats | Eric Peters Autos

This isn’t baby fat we’re talking here, either. These are three-year-olds who weigh in at 40 pounds or more. These kids are on a (fast food) track to being 200 pounders by their teens. Those gummi bears and juice boxes really add up. That and a Pixar-watching, Play Station lifestyle. As we get fatter and fatter, so do kids – emulating the example (and lifestyle) of their parents.

to do something via playing a video game - doesn’t come up in any of the coverage one can find about this story. Instead, we get calls for super-sized car safety seats – units titanic enough to hold Baby Fatima so that she’s not injured in the event of a car wreck. That she’ll end up a teen diabetic and dead from heart disease by 50 – doesn’t seem to matter. So much easier to just build a bigger seat than put not-so-junior on a diet.

The car seat study appears in the journal, Pediatrics ,which is associated with Johns Hopkins Hospital. One of the study’s authors, Lara Trifiletti, decided to look into the matter after she discovered researchers evaluating the functionality of child safety seats were encountering problems finding seats to fit/properly restrain obese children.

According to federal data, almost one quarter of all American children ages 2 to 5 are overweight; 10 percent are medically obese and at elevated risk for developing early-onset diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other potentially life-threatening illnesses directly associated with being beefy.

These weighty waddlers need wide-load seats like the $250 Britax “Husky” – No, I am not making this up – designed to handle kids who weight up to 80-lbs. Remember, this is for 3-5 year-olds. Hopefully, the parents of these kids are going to the gym – because they’ll need Popeye-sized biceps to heft their little giants onboard the family SMooVee. Maybe the automakers will develop a special auto-winch system? Or heavy-lift running boards?

Britax spokeswoman Joyce Kara told the Associate Press that the childhood obesity epidemic is “something that we do keep in mind when designing our seats to make sure our seats are versatile in accommodating all sizes of children.”

They might be better served if someone sent them a free season pass to Golds Gym.

Meanwhile, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is looking into new regulations which would apply to these super-sized child seats – and will be using a crash test dummy carrying an extra 25 pounds to simulate an 80-lb. youngster. No word as to whether the shock absorbers on the cars involved will also be tested (or upgraded to handle the load).