Ignorance Should Not Be Blissful.

A couple of days ago I awoke to a very active Facebook feed. My mom friends had gone crazy and all of them were posting the same link. Apparently the AAP has changed its recommendation regarding car seats. The new recommendation can be found here. For many, including myself, this was a long awaited development. Personally, I have known for a very long time that rear facing is the safest position to ride in a vehicle. In fact, everybody would be safer rear facing but we all know that the driver could not rear face for practical reasons.

There is a ton of information available on the subject and any parent or caregiver wishing to research their options should be able to easily find what they need. A couple of really good articles and resources are as follows:

Here

Here

Here

The evidence in favor of leaving your children rear facing as long as possible is overwhelming. Yet, I was surprised to find a number of people on Facebook saying that this new recommendation by the AAP was "stupid" and saying that they wouldn't be putting it into practice unless it became a law. Many of them were utterly convinced that their child was too big to rear face past one year. Some people stated that their child's legs were too long and were crunched up, some stated that their kids outgrew their seats. There were some who were convinced that their kids would have been hurt worse if they had been rear facing during specific incidents.

I am generally a "to each their own" type of person. But I draw the line regarding the safety of my children and regarding the safety of yours as well. These people are WRONG. Let me slow that down. These excuses are W-R-O-N-G. They are excuses. First, and foremost, rear facing is a matter of simple physics. I am not scientifically minded and even I know that. All that a parent has to do is watch one or two videos on extended rear facing to actually see the difference between an accident with a child who is rear facing vs. an accident in which a child is facing forward.

Children are flexible, they will make their legs comfortable. They will find a way to drape their legs over the sides of the seat or they will put them up on the back of the seat. And if, by some small chance, there was an accident and the child's legs were broken the legs would surely be a smaller concern than the spine. I would certainly rather have a child in a leg cast than a child in a casket, due to a broken neck. My son is a long, skinny type of guy and he rear faced comfortably in his car seat until December 2010, when he was 3 months shy of his third birthday. He never complained because rear facing was all that he knew. His legs were fine because he made them so. There goes that argument.

The other argument is that rear facing is only safer in a front end collision and that the parent is concerned over what would happen in a rear end collision. This is a wonderful account of rear facing in a rear end collision. Here is some information on rear end collisions and rear facing car seats. Certainly, in these cases, rear facing is not making the odds worse for the child.

Finally, the fact of the matter is that unless a parent is referring to the bucket-seat style infant carrier that we use in the first months of a child's life then it is highly unlikely that a child under one year would outgrow a rear facing seat. Most infant carriers fit children until roughly 22 pounds (in my experience). But after that, you do not have to turn your child around. There are plenty of options available in all price ranges to keep a child rear facing beyond the 1 year and 20 pound minimum. Let me say that again, 1 and 20 is the MINIMUM. My long, skinny son also rear faced in a Cosco Scenera until he was over 2. The Scenera is found here and it is extremely budget friendly. In fact, my son only had to be turned in his Scenera because of his height. He is now three and has just barely crossed the weight threshold for that seat (and it is my understanding that the Scenera has a lower rear facing height in comparison with many of its competitors, so there are surely options for everyone).

In my opinion, it is ignorant to have these facts staring you in the face and to choose to remain ignorant. In fact, many of the arguments that I was seeing were based on convenience for the parents which is a whole new blog post in and of itself. Ignorance should not be blissful. To ignore facts about child safety, for whatever reason, does not make you a cool, edgy parent. It makes you a parent who is refusing to see truth at the expense of the well-being of your child. Ignorance should not be blissful and it certainly will not be blissful when a child gets an injury that could have been prevented by extended rear facing. I'm not suggesting that people run out and spend $300+ on car seats that keep their children facing rear until they are 18 years old. What I am suggesting is that we embrace the truth and we all leave our children rear facing until they outgrow the rear facing limits of their car seats.

For further reading, I suggest any interested parent or caregiver go to this site:

http://www.cpsafety.org/

It offers a plethora of information on car seat safety. I see at least two pictures of incorrectly used car seats on my Facebook feed every.single.day. This, to me, is unacceptable. It has to end. We need to keep our children safe. Keeping them facing rear is an easy way to start and it is one of the most crucial arenas in which we should be concerned about our children.