My husband is the car seat guy in our family. This means that he is in charge of installing them–in both our cars and also in the nanny's, my mom's and my sister's cars. Ever the control freak, he reads the instructions of each and every single one of them and gives all those who are going to be strapping our kids into them a lesson on what to do and what not to do.
I'm thankful for this not only because I know my children will always be secure while in any of the car seats installed by my husband, but also because I feel like I can't keep up with the constant changes in safety recommendations. Not to mention the conflicting opinions of other parents who write about this topic online. For starters, which do you think is the safest place for your child's car seat? The window seat or the middle seat?
I was always told the middle seat is safest, but apparently not every parent knows this. Not only is it sort of common sense to me, but it was also the recommendation we received from the car seat expert before we left the hospital with our first daughter back in 2006. Isn't that what every parent is told?
I must admit that although it was pretty much a pain for me to have to climb into the backseat of my SUV every time I wanted to both put in and take out my daughter's car seat from the middle seat, that's still were it went in the name of safety. And then, my son was born and there was no way to put both his infant rear-facing car seat and my daughter's convertible car seat next to each other. There was simply not enough space to do that and have both car seats installed correctly. So we installed one on each side.
Either way, I was wrong assuming that my infant's car seat should have gone in the center with his older sister's car seat on the side next to him. For those of you with more than one child, check this out, according to leading car seat experts, "Since the center is the safest spot, try to put the person who is least protected in the center." In other words, because a rear-facing child is five times safer than a forward-facing child or adult, it's better for the forward-facing child to be in the middle.
See what I mean about how frustrating it is to read about all the different car seat recommendations out there are? If you're anything like me and you'd rather be safe than sorry, don't take anybody's word for it and go to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Car Seat Inspection Station Locator to find where you can get yours checked.
Where do you put your children's car seats? Did you know the center seat was safest?
Image via supafly/flickr