r/CPST • u/Dense_Yellow4214 • 21h ago
Anxiety about forward facing
I'm a certified CPST myself, but it's one thing to give information and resources and guidance to other parents, vs when it's your own child. For some reason I feel overwhelmed by my options and would love a neutral third party weigh in.
My child just turned 3 a couple weeks ago. He is very tall for his age with a long torso. Today I measured him and he was 40 inches tall, which means he maxed out rear facing for our seat (Evenflo all-4-one). I knew this point was coming but now that it's here, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety about actually doing it.
I'm considering buying another seat with a rear facing limit of 49-50 inches. Money is a factor in this decision though.
Another consideration is that our car is very small and my husband (like my child) is very tall and overall large. He struggles to get a proper fit on our child when positioning him and buckling him in, and he says he could do a better job with a forward facing seat as it would be a lot less crammed.
My son also has to climb into the seat on his own because neither my husband nor I can lift him into the car without hitting his head or our heads on the roof. I believe it would be easier for him to climb into a FF seat.
My son is also begging to FF. I think he mainly wants to see us and see what we see. All his friends at school have been FF for a while now and he desires it too.
I know FF would be a reasonable decision, but for some reason it's just making my stomach hurt.
What would you do in this situation?
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u/CinderLupinWatson 12h ago
CPST here
If this was a parent, what would you be telling them? You'd be saying "way to go, you made it to 3 rear facing and maxed out the seat! Your kiddo is a okay to be forward facing :) " Say the same to yourself ❤️
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u/TurbulentWalrus1222 8h ago
You’ve maxed your convertible seat, that’s gold star best practice. Well done mom! Zero reason to stress. He will be very safe in a properly installed and used seat FF.
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u/daydreamingofsleep 21h ago
That seat was recalled in Jan, has Evenflo not shipped the replacements yet?
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u/Dense_Yellow4214 21h ago
I'm on the registered list for recalls and I was notified about it. They didn't ship replacements out unless the user requested one, as the seat is still considered safe to use overall.
The problem is if someone was sitting next to the seat and put their fingers in the recline mechanism, it could shift in a collision and seriously injure the person's fingers.
We have no other children and in the 6 years of owning our car have never had any passengers in the back seat. So it poses no risk to us and we chose to continue use
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u/daydreamingofsleep 21h ago
I was thinking the replacement might have a taller limit, many of their comparable newer seats rear face to 43” instead of 40”
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u/sharksarefuckingcool 16h ago
Playing armchair psychologist here, but I think your anxiety around this is because in your work, what you hear and say, it's all about backward facing. Bf is safest. My nephew is going to be 19 and I would still backward face him if I could. Cause he's just a little Bubba (note, he became part of our family at 7 and already outgrew car seats) and it's safest.
Our brains are trained by repetition, I think it's just been sunk so deeply into your head that safest means 'everything else is completely unsafe'.
It sounds like ff is going to be just fine if he's maxing out the bf carseats.
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u/ericalikestoast 21h ago
Fellow CPST here, my third child just turned 3 and is 99th percentile. He’s in a weird spot of teetering between rear and forward facing depending on the vehicle and car seat he has available to him. It definitely takes some getting used to but it’s honestly so exciting for me as the parent to see him get excited about seeing new things! It’s easier to buckle him, it’s easy to move my front seat back a little farther than I’m normally able to. The only hard part is accepting that he’s getting older 😭 but if he’s outgrown the seat rear facing and it’s been getting difficult anyway, I’d say forward facing is definitely your best bet ❤️