How do you make parents care about car safety?.

It's hard to watch my friend not take her children's safety seriously year after year. I've tried to help in the past, but awareness doesn't seem to change her habits. What will?

I first became aware of a problem when her daughter was two and we carpooled to go camping. K's Alpha Omega Elite was extremely twisted to the point it was difficult to buckle despite being very loose. Watching her mother fasten it, it was obvious she didn't know how to deal with it and had given up trying to make it work. On the trip, I offered to straighten it out for her. She accepted and I spent the next half hour untwisting, showing the mother how to adjust the straps, etc. A few months later, I glimpsed the seat in its previous mangled condition.

K is now 5 and in a regular seatbelt. Her brother L, 3, is in a backless booster of some kind. I saw this recently when they visited my home. When they left, I did what little I could in the moment and pushed the shoulder belt slides to their lowest position. The mother said she didn't know they did that. Knowing their seating situation, I cringed to think what might have happened when I was told the family was almost rear-ended on the freeway this summer at high speed while towing a trailer. When I babysat the kids here last week, their mother dropped them off and their father picked them up. He asked if a seat had been left, but one had not. He packed both kids into seatbelts in the back with an 'oh, well' attitude and smiled while telling me not to worry because that's just how it was in the old days.

So with a father who thinks carseat laws exist for companies to make money and a mother who threw in the towel a long time ago, what could make them change their minds? Reporting them would only serve to cost them money and make them angry. But how do you make otherwise good parents take safety seriously? I'd like to cause positive change here as a friend and not breed anger while losing one. Maybe there isn't a solution at all.

Unfortunately, you don't. You keep saying the same safe things over and over (I go from diplomatic to scare tactics, sometimes in the same post), offer help when you think it WILL help, and otherwise put on blinders. But some parents won't, and for some it'll take the death of their child to learn. But any way, it's not something you can force. They either will start caring or they won't.

Wendy

You learn to let go.

I gave my friend a HBTB for her 5 year old who was riding in nothing, showed her how to use it with and without the back and explained how it helped protect her son. A few months later a mutual friend was picking up the 5 year old and I was in her car- the mom of the 5 year old brought out a 5 point harness when she saw I was there- he was way too big for it. But she was going to let him go in nothing until she saw me, the car seat freak. He ended up riding in nothing. I just hope she still uses a seat for her 2 year old,who she also had riding in just a seat belt.