I’ve written before about the importance of keeping young children rear-facing as long as possible, but am always keen to write more on the topic. It’s why the only car seats I recommend and review are those with the highest rear-facing and forward-facing limits currently available in the United States. The Frontier G1.1, pictured above, is the best forward-facing and booster seat you can buy today.

However, another area where most parents aren’t following best practices involves the transition from forward-facing children in 5-point harnesses to using booster seats. When should this be done? When is too early? What makes it too early? This post is designed to answer these kinds of questions and to serve as a reference to be shared.

First, Rear-Face to the Limits

First of all, for physiological reasons, we should try to rear-face our children until they’ve outgrown the height or weight limits for their seats. Children’s spinal cords and musculature are in development, and simply aren’t as strong as those of adults or even older children. Rear-facing them distributes forces more easily and offers them much more protection than forward-facing. The best seats right now, the Clek Fllo, the Clek Foonf, the Diono Rainier, the Graco Extend2Fit, the Graco Extend2Fit 3-in-1, the Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit, the Nuna Rava, the Safety 1st Advance EX 65 Air+, and the Safety 1st Grow and Go EX Air, provide up to 50 lbs of rear-facing time by weight, allowing most kids to rear-face until at least 5.

That’s standard practice in Sweden.

Whether you’re forward-facing at 50 lbs or earlier, but still at the limits of your seat, you’ll want to keep doing so until your child outgrows his or her forward-facing seat by weight or height. Remember that straps should be at or above the child’s shoulders and the ears of the child should be below the top of the shell. Also remember to attach the top tether every time the seat is installed or in use.

Let’s say you’ve checked off all of the issues above, but your child happens to be 4 (or 3, or 2…). Can you switch?

Don’t Rush Boostering Your Child

No! It’s too early. This is just like how the current law for forward-facing in the US is that it can be done (though it’s a bad idea) from when the child is 1. Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s right. For example, it’s legal to drive cars without seat belts (really!) in the US as long as they were made before seat belts were required in vehicles (in the mid 1960s). Does that mean it’s a good idea?

No! Because there’s yet another factor to consider, and that’s the positioning of the child. Something most parents don’t know is that a child needs to be able to stay seated properly (as in upright, and not leaning forward, to the left, to the right, or reaching for things or twisting back and forth or horsing around) 100% of the time, including while asleep, in order to be a safe booster candidate.

This is the maturity angle that’s very easy to overlook, and this is part of why booster training is recommended and keeping young children out of them is also a good idea. If a wriggly child is in a 5-point-harness, he or she is kept safe in a collision (although not as safe as when rear-facing, but we can’t rear-face them forever). If that same wriggly child is wriggling in a seat belt, he or she will fare much worse in a collision, as the belt will not be able to protect him or her nearly as well.

So What’s a Minimum Age for Using a Booster?

So what’s the earliest you should even *consider* switching from forward-facing to a booster? Personally, I’d suggest waiting until 5 at a minimum. Why? Because right now, right this day, there are seats that can keep children rear-facing until then. Growth charts show that a 50th percentile girl will reach 50 lbs at age 7 and 44″ at 5 years, 5 months. A 50th percentile boy will reach 50 lbs and 44″ at exactly the same ages. In other words, the average child won’t outgrow the best convertibles on the market until s/he is around 5 and a half years old!

But what if you don’t have the budget for a 50 pound rear-facing seat? Well, the growth charts above show that a 50th percentile child will reach 40 pounds at around age 5. This means that a 40 pound convertible like the Graco Size4Me 65 that’s tall enough to allow virtually all children to outgrow it by weight instead of by height will be able to keep the average child rear-facing until 5!

Placing children in a booster when they’re still capable of fitting in a rear-facing seat is unnecessarily risky, somewhat like riding in our metaphorical seat belt free car when you’ve got a perfectly normal seat belted car at your disposal. The odds are that you won’t crash, but the odds will be dramatically against you if you do. The same goes for young children placed in boosters when they’d fit in rear-facing seats.

Now what if your child is on the taller or heavier end, or you simply don’t have the finances for a high weight/height convertible? Is your only option to booster your young child?

No. You can booster–in fact, the research doesn’t show a safety difference for forward-facing seats and booster seats for children who are old enough to sit properly in booster seats–but you can also forward-face.

It’s really up to you and the maturity of your child

On one hand, Swedish kids start forward-facing when they’re 4 or 5, and they have the best records of child auto fatalities on the planet. However, you know your child best, and it’s all right to keep forward-facing until the seat is outgrown. Most forward-facing seats allow you to do so until at least 65 pounds, and that’s the equivalent of a 9-year-old 50th percentile child (keeping in mind that most children will outgrow most seats by height before by weight).

However, ignoring seat fit questions and focusing on age for the moment, will a 7, 8, or 9-year-old be able to be taught to sit maturely in a booster seat with a seat belt? Yes! Is the same going to be true for a 2, 3, or 4-year-old?

I doubt it. To be honest, I doubt it’ll be true for most children in the US under 5, which is where I think the average child will be ready to transition into a booster seat. So in general, I’d recommend waiting until at least 5 for many kids, with 4 as the absolute minimum.

The NHTSA recommendation is to forward-face until 8 if possible. But to draw the line at a real-world absolute minimum point, I’d draw it at age 5, for both physiological, developmental, and practical reasons. Physiologically, their bodies simply aren’t ready before 5. Developmentally, they aren’t nearly mature enough before 5. Practically, there are seats that can keep them rear-facing until 5 or even beyond.

All of this adds up to suggest children should not be switched from forward-facing car seats into booster configurations until they’re at least 5, and optionally not until 8. It’s a bit more work, but it’s worth it. Here are the seats that are as good as it gets for rear, forward-facing, and boostering today in the United States. I wholeheartedly recommend them.

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If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.

I’ve written before about the importance of keeping young children rear-facing as long as possible, but am always keen to write more on the topic. It’s why the car seats I recommend and review are those with the highest rear-facing limits currently available in the United States.

Here is an article from the New York Times (from 2011) that discusses the issue, with my thoughts on specific parts of it.

Toddlers are usually switched from rear-facing to forward-facing car seats right after their first birthday — an event many parents may celebrate as a kind of milestone.

This is a phenomenon I’ve seen too often. Parents want to switch as quickly as possible, and even see switching as the car equivalent of a baby taking her first steps or saying his first words. However, switching later is better. In fact, switching at one is much too early.

The advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics, issued Monday, is based primarily on a 2007 University of Virginia study finding that children under 2 are 75 percent less likely to suffer severe or fatal injuries in a crash if they are facing the rear.

In other words, switching children from rear-facing to forward-facing positions significantly increases their risks of suffering severe or fatal injuries in car collisions.

The new policy statement also advises that older children should ride in a belt-positioning booster seat until they are 4 feet 9 inches tall, and 8 to 12 years old. 

This bit of advice is also important, as many parents rush to place their children in the front seats of their vehicles simply because their children ask them to, because they want to share the experience of driving with their children early, or because it’s more convenient and cheaper than worrying about booster seats. However, placing children in seat belts before they’re tall enough to fit them well (4 feet 9 inches, per the AAP), places them at risk.

“We want them to recognize that with each transition they make, from rear-facing to forward-facing, to booster seats, there is a decline in the safety of their child. That’s why we are urging parents to delay these transitions for as long as possible.”

This is something I’ve said for years; each seat transition increases risks. Technically, adults would also be safer rear-facing or forward-facing in harnesses, but that’s a discussion for another day. The key point is that the safest configuration for a child is a rear-facing one. Forward-facing a child makes him or her less safe, and booster seats (unless children sit well) are less safe than forward-facing seats.

The academy’s previous policy, from 2002, said it was safest for infants and toddlers to ride facing the rear, and cited 12 months and 20 pounds as the minimum requirements for turning the car seat forward.

This was the old recommendation, and it wasn’t good enough. To be honest, the new recommendation isn’t good enough either. That’s why car seat safety advocates (including yours truly) advocate extended rear facing. And you know what? It’s actually the standard in some other countries.

Sweden, for instance, where children face the rear until age 4, has the world’s lowest highway fatality rate for children under 6.

This is a fact you’ll see mentioned on this site time and time again because it’s that important. If you rear-face until age 4, you’re giving your child an advantage–a big one. The Swedes have done this for decades, and it’s one of the reasons why they lose so few children to collisions.

“It’s a horrible term,” she said, “but E.M.T.’s call the rear-facing seat ‘the orphan seat’ because in a bad car accident, that child is often the only one who survives.”

My goal is to prevent the rear-facing seat from being the orphan seat for your family; that’s why I write endlessly about car safety. But car seat safety is a part of car safety, and is essential to keep in mind. I’ve written up several cases that involved orphan seats, and the phenomenon is real.

Until recently, most car seats that could be turned to face the rear did not accommodate children weighing more than 20 pounds. Today, however, the limits are closer to 30 to 35 pounds, and a few go to 45 pounds.

It’s worth keeping in mind that this hasn’t been true for a long time outside of the US. Sweden has long had 45 pound and higher car seats, and seats that could rear-face that long only recently became available in the United States. Fortunately, we also now have a few seats capable of reaching 50 pounds, such as the Pacifica, Rainier, and Foonf, pictured above.

The evidence is clear. Rear-face your children to keep them safe. Here is part of a thoughtful comment in the discussion section of that article:

Steve from Arizona wrote:

“This new recommendation is a step in the right direction but it’s still outdated by 30 years. The recommendation by the real experts, the Swedes, is to keep children rear facing until age 4 or longer. That’s what the Swedes do and thanks to this the fatality rate is basically zero each year for young children. Amazing and impressive.

I found this out through pure luck, was working with a Swedish guy who insisted on keeping his children rear facing. Now I’m a rear facing fan since it’s a real life saver. My kids are turned around and will remain rear facing until 4+ years.

Our country is so far behind in car seat safety is embarrassing. We are where the Swedes were 1980. Consider that for a minute. I think we should do better than today and have our children grow up instead of being injured/die in preventable accidents.

The Swedes have rear facing seats which make us look like a third world nation. The seats are compact, rear facing limit of 55 lbs and fit small to large cars. Children sit with bent legs which is safe and comfortable. To grasp some basic info try carseat.se which is an English site with easy to read info.

Oh, poster #101 still hasn’t understood that rear facing is 500% safer, 5 times safer, which has been proven by peer reviewed research and real life experiences in Sweden.

Must surely be a coincidence the Swedes have a zero fatality rate for young kids while it’s the number one killer in US….?”

With all this in mind, why would you want to place your children in seats that don’t allow them to rear-face as much as possible? Why wait for another decade for the AAP to realize that rear-facing until 3 is a good idea? Because even then, they’ll still be 25 pounds behind the Swedes!

Here are the seats that are as good as it gets for rear-facing today in the United States. I wholeheartedly recommend them. Hopefully we’ll soon start seeing seats with even higher height and weight limits.

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If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.