Find out the latest tips, tricks, deals, steals, and information about car seats and accessories

New parents often worry around the position of their newborn’s head. However, what you may think looks safe may not actually be the best position for your child’s head. Observe your baby when he’s sleeping in his bassinet. You’ll notice that his head will most often be turned to one side.

Same goes when you hold them on your shoulder or wear them in a sling. Turning their heads to one side is the most natural way for them to breathe. When some parents see babies with their heads turned to one side in a car seat, however, they think the baby isn’t positioned right.

That’s when they’ll turn to padded head supports (aka infant inserts) or even rolled up receiving blankets to hold their heads straight up. Unfortunately, these additions can push the baby’s head down onto his chest, which is dangerous because it can obstruct the airway. This is especially true for any aftermarket products that didn’t come with the car seat.

So, how do you ensure your newborn is safely positioned?

From the time your baby leaves the hospital until he can use a seat belt alone, you’ll need a child safety seat. With the vast array of car seats on the market, it’s hard to determine which one is best as your child gets older.

The AAP now recommends keeping your child rear-facing for as long as you can past 2 years of age. Some infant rear-facing car seats have a low weight limit of 22 pounds that make extended use almost impossible. Likewise, most forward-facing seats on the market have a minimum age of 2 years. While it’s technically legal to turn a child forward-facing at this age, it’s better to wait.

Luckily, more car seat manufacturers are listening to the AAP’s recommendations and are now making car seats that allow for extended rear-facing use. But why is this even necessary?

By the time your child is two years old, he or she will be very busy indeed. They’ll want to get their little hands on everything to see what it feels like and how it works. Buttons, switches, door handles – these are all irresistible to a toddler. A child’s natural curiosity leads him to wonder how objects react when touched.

But as you know, that curiosity can backfire if a child touches something he’s not supposed to like a hot stove or a car door handle. While you should always have your child buckled in a safety seat, some kids can be escape artists. In just a few seconds, they could easily be out of their car seat and have the door open while you’re going down the road.

Or maybe you have an older elementary school child who is always in a hurry and wants to open the door and jump out before the car comes to a complete stop.

Scary? Yes. But thankfully, there’s an easy fix to that right on your car door.

Car seat installation can be confusing. There are so many different car seats on the market, all with various installation methods. Over time, new safety features have made installation a feat in itself. Getting it right each and every time is difficult.

But getting it right can be the difference between life and death. A quarter of all children who died in car crashes in 2015 were unrestrained. Up to 60% of all car seats are installed incorrectly. Those numbers show that parents still have room to improve when it comes to car seat safety.

The term “special needs” can refer to many different physical or behavioral challenges. Autism, for instance, is a spectrum disorder with issues that can range from minimal to severe. Some kids with special needs may do just fine in a conventional car seat. But others may be much safer in an adaptive seat designed to meet their specific challenges.

Whether your child can benefit from an adaptive seat or not should be determined between you and your child’s healthcare team. Generally, there are a few situations in which a child can truly benefit from a car seat for special needs.

“Do not eat” warns the pack of silica gel that comes in the box with your latest electronics. It seems like commonsense, and we may laugh because that means someone probably did eat it, got sick or worse, and sued the company. We joke that warnings are everywhere because of people who do not make smart decisions.

When my parents were young cars didn’t have seat belts, much less shoulder harnesses. Kids waved at other cars and even slept in that big expanse above and behind the rear seats. In Volkswagen Beetles the storage area behind the rear seat and adjacent to the rear engine was a great place to stick a couple of small kids when space was tight. While the Beetle was featured in a Disney movie as the beloved Herbie, the design was also known for fires in the rear engine compartment. The first “car seats” hooked over the back of the seat and were strictly meant to raise toddlers to a level where they could see out the window, promoting toddler happiness and parental peace. Other than keeping them somewhat contained, these seats offered no safety advantage, and would have become missiles in a crash, with their little astronauts still in the seat.

Fast forward to 2018, with government organizations monitoring safety, consumer organizations monitoring the government organizations, and access to the internet putting all this monitoring information at your fingertips. We have more information than at any time in history, enabling us to take control of our lives, our safety, and the safety of our children. How we use that information is up to us. But who is ultimately responsible for the safety of a child?

Following up on stories from my parents’ childhood and in keeping with our subject matter let’s start with a simple test.

Today we are considering the Smith family, two adult parents who love their son George more than anything in the world. Even before George was born his parents researched daycare options, pediatricians, cribs, and child car seats and local laws regarding their use. They confidently settled on a well-priced all-in-one car seat due to its excellent safety ratings, ability to grow with their child, and positive parent reviews. The Smiths took advantage of the information available to them to ensure their baby would be safe and happy.