My daughter is in the second grade and still rides in a five-point harness child safety seat. You’d think by now she would have graduated to a backless booster, but not all kids grow at the same rate. Similarly, not all car seats are made the same.
My daughter’s Graco Nautilus 3-in-1 car seat is designed for kids up to 100 pounds. Currently, she doesn’t even weigh half that. While the seat converts to a backless booster for a child 40 to 100 pounds, my little peanut barely makes the mark, so for the foreseeable future she will remain strapped in the seat’s standard design.
Truth be told, I fear the day that she has to move from the seat to the booster. I feel so much safer with her securely strapped in by a five-point harness in a padded car seat with a steel reinforced frame.
Whereas I remain stalwart in my goal of keeping my daughter safe and sound in her five-point harness seat, I know there are many, many other parents out there who can’t wait for their kid to graduate to a booster, so they don’t have to deal with the extra straps and buckles. Unfortunately, this mentality can lead to moms and dads jumping the gun and placing their kids in boosters too early, or simply skipping the elevated seat all together.
That’s a huge mistake, according to child safety experts, and they have the statistics to prove it. A recent study done by The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia found that kids ages 4 to 8, who rode in booster seats, were 45 percent less likely to be injured in a crash than kids who were simply strapped in with seat belts alone.
Sadly, not all booster seats are 100 percent safe. According to the International Institute for Highway Safety, which recently tested more than 80 models of high back and backless booster seats, several well-known brands did not make the grade.
Placing high on the International Institute for Highway Safety’s Not Recommended List:
*Safety 1st Alpha Omega Elite
*Safety 1st All-in-One
*Evenflo Sightseer
*Evenflo Generations 65
*Evenflo Express
*Evenflo Chase
Regardless of the brand or model of booster you are looking to purchase for your son or daughter, child safety experts remind parents that kids should only ride in booster seats when they reach the proper height and weight limits for forward facing car seats. Experts say if your vehicle’s lap belt does not lie flat across your child’s upper thighs (it should not sit across your child’s abdomen), and the shoulder belt does not cross snugly over the middle of your kid’s shoulder, then he is not ready to graduate to a booster.
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