As we near the 12 month mark, I find a lot of people asking if we're looking forward to turning Julian's car seat around. I find that very few people know what I'm talking about when I respond that we are keeping his seat rear facing for safety. That scares me a little. Not because I expect everyone to over-google EVERYTHING like I do, but because I feel our local Pediatricians should at least inform parents of the many reasons why rear facing continues to be the safest - even past 1 year and 20 lbs. Shocking, considering the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends keeping your child rear facing until they are 2 years and 30 lbs (or until you've hit the height or weight limit on your car seat, whichever comes first.)
So I figured what the heck - this is my blog, I can get on the safety soapbox a little...I'm going to spread the word. I know many of you probably have read articles or seen statistics, so in that case - feel free to ignore the rest of this post, but for those of you that haven't - here are some sources that helped Eddie and I to come to our decision to do extended rear facing. As of right now Julian knows no different than looking at the backseat, but even if he did...I would try my best to continue to rear face him as long as I was able to.
I hope the following will be useful to someone out there. This really is a topic that I feel needs to be talked about more.
video: Joel's story (including crash test footage very much worth watching)
video 2: Crash test footage alone (peppered with random German phrases)
Some info regarding rear-facing and rear-end accidents:
http://myangelsaliandpeanut.tripod.com/id5.html
More info and debunking of commong rear-facing myths and misconceptions:
http://www.carsafety4kids.com/rearfacing.html
Another site:
http://www.cpsafety.com/articles/StayRearFacing.aspx
2 comments:
Great post!! It's amazing how many people still think as soon as they hit the one year mark you have to turn them around. Before S was even born we planned on keeping her rear-facing for as long as we could. We got a rear-facing infant car seat that goes up to 32 lbs for that reason. Such an easy way to keep them safe but so overlooked!
thank you for your post. i have also been considering leaving my daughter, jaelyn, rear facing for awhile longer. i haven't done much research on the matter but she will be ONE next week & i have no intentions on switching. thanks again!!!
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