This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Car Seats: Rear or Forward Facing?

Leg room is the major obstacle in keeping babies rear facing longer.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently recommended that parents and caregivers keep their children riding rear-facing in car seats until age two, not 1-year-old as previously recommended. 

While the statistics show that by doing so will keep their children safer, many parents became quite distressed by the news and many were not eager to embrace the latest medical advice about how best to protect children from serious head, neck and spinal injuries.

On an unusually warm Wednesday in October, I spent the day at the Essex County Car Seat Fitting Station located at 120 Dorsa Ave. in Livingston to take the temperature of both the Certified Child Passenger Safety Technicians who volunteer at the site and the parents and caregivers who visit the station on this question.  On the whole, most parents were OK with keeping their child rear-facing longer. 

Find out what's happening in Livingstonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Expecting or first time parents with their wide-eyed enthusiasm were eager to embrace the instruction and left the station blissfully ignorant of the challenges of parenting. 

Then there were other parents who would say things like, “I know it’s safer, but…”  These are the battle weary parents with their Cheerios encrusted rear seats who were welcoming a new brother or sister to their family.  These parents who are already in the trenches fighting the battle of keeping their child safe in the car while trying to keep their sanity.

Find out what's happening in Livingstonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The child’s leg room is the major obstacle in keeping them rear-facing longer.  Unlike Sweden, where safety seats are designed to provide adequate leg room for rear-facing children up to age 4, U.S. safety seats are made to fit snugly against the back of the vehicle seat, leaving little room for growing limbs. 

Safety experts are mindful that it is the particularly difficult developmental phase of the children affected: squirmy toddlers who will resist being confined in safety seats facing any direction.  I saw many instances of this while I was there.

“Once parents understand why it’s safer,” said Patty Difilippo, a nurse at Mountainside Hospital and a senior Car Seat Technician and instructor at the station, “most will gladly wait to turn the car seat around.”

The latest recommendation is not a legal requirement, though safety advocates say state laws often lag behind what they consider best practices. No state requires that children sit in rear-facing seats after having their first birthday or reaching a body weight of 20 pounds but many states, including New Jersey, require that children up to age 8 be properly restrained according to the manufacturer’s instructions in a harnessed car seat or belt-positioning booster seat. 

All manufacturers of convertible safety seats (the kind that can be rear or forward facing) say in the instructions that the seat must be rear-facing until the child reaches one year and 20 or 22 pounds.

Child safety specialists have long known that rear-facing is the safest for all ages and they previously recommended the one year/20 pounds because that was the weight limit the manufacturers put on the rear-facing seats.  But to meet the growing demand from parents of overweight babies and young toddlers, manufacturers now design seats to carry rear-facing children up to 45 pounds.

Why is riding rear facing longer important, medical experts say, because infant’s heads are relatively heavy and their necks and spines are less developed.  In a crash, the child’s heavy head can snap forward with a force that can break their necks, injure their spinal cords and cause severe brain injuries. 

When rear-facing, the safety seat cradles the head and neck, keeping them properly aligned and spreads the crash forces across the entire body.  As for the limited leg room, pediatricians say children are far more flexible than adults, which allows them to sit comfortably with their legs folded for long periods.  Moreover, studies show that leg injuries are relatively rare in rear-facing children and are more common in forward-facing children.  Most important, doctors say, leg injuries are far less serious than head, neck and spine injuries that they see in forward-facing children.

The Certified Child Passenger Safety Technicians at the Essex County Car Seat Fitting Station are well aware of the risks and rewards in choosing how you transport your child. Many of them are EMTs, retired and active duty police officers and nurses who are intimately aware of the injuries that can be sustained by children in car crashes.  They volunteer their time to help educate parents and caregivers on best practices and on how to keep their children as safe as possible in the event a crash occurs.  The hope is that their efforts here will make working their “day jobs” easier.

The Livingston Car Seat Fitting Station is open every Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.               

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?