Vent How do you keep your cool?

MotoMommaNH · Apr 24, 2013

When it comes to seeing gross misuse and negligence??

I have my CPST class coming up next month and I'm hoping that they teach me this...

Twice in a week I've seen a 4/5ish year old in the FRONT seat with NO child restraint whatsoever (harnessed OR booster). I know I live in NH and some of these parts are less educated than others but you HAVE to know that doing that is unbelievably unsafe, illegal and just wrong!

Both times, I was driving so not like I could have done or said anything, but it still makes me so upset! Just this morning, the women driving with her boy in the front was tailgating me to no end. Swerving in lanes behind me and just driving recklessly. The seat belt was almost in front of his face for goodness sake!

Sorry for ranting; I just had to get it off my chest and knew you guys would understand. Phew, I feel a little better now.

wendytthomas · Apr 24, 2013

Rant here and don't look. For mental health reasons, though, I either don't look or immediately dismiss it from my mind.

Wendy

happiness-and-balance · Apr 24, 2013

I do my best to not allow it to get to me. It sounds silly, but it takes practice. I usually just remind myself that there's nothing I can do and either come here to rant or rant in my head.

lovemy2kidstw · Apr 24, 2013

Yeah, just don't look or if you do look, just pray they don't get into an accident.

Most people really do care about their kids safety, they just always seem to have the attitude of 'It won't happen to me'. They probably won't change unless it does happen to them unfortunately.

HaileysMommy · Apr 24, 2013

It comes with time. Now the only ones that really bother me are when it comes to friends and family because I really care about these kids. Not to say I don't care about other kids but its more personal with friends and family. And even then I have one friend where I have just thrown my hands up and said forget it. She knows better but doesn't care. Just remember "you can't save everyone". Parents will know what's best and still chose differently. It's their choice bc it's their kid...this helps me too.

skylinphoto · Apr 24, 2013

If youre the praying kind, say a prayer for them.
It helps feel like youre doing something about it...in a way..

Adopting the "cant save em all" attitude helps too..

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 using Car-Seat.Org

henrietta · Apr 24, 2013

The thing that helps me the most is having compassion--understanding that most people who do such incredibly dumb things do love their kids, as much as I love mine, and that they actually do NOT know better. You might think they do, but obviously, they don't or they wouldn't do it. Some people actually don't care at all, but they are the minority. Most folks are fooled or tricked by the fact that nothing has happened to them in X many years....so they get complacent.

And you really can't save them all. Survival of the fittest and all that...makes me sad, but it's kind of true.

nannykates · Apr 24, 2013

I called 911 on a car following me last friday with an unrestrained (as in no seatbelt) child in the front. It took the cops two min to pull them over!

MotoMommaNH · Apr 24, 2013

nannykates said:
I called 911 on a car following me last friday with an unrestrained (as in no seatbelt) child in the front. It took the cops two min to pull them over!

Yep, DH saw a station wagon coming off the interstate onto a main road and as they turned saw the back hatch was wide open with three kids sitting in the back completely unrestrained. He called the cops on that one. They were almost immediately pulled over.

I will follow the advice of "can't save 'em all" and certainly concentrate on my upcoming checks and helping out my friends and nieces and nephews! thanks all for the clearheaded-ness. :thumbsup:

cake... · Apr 24, 2013

My roommate lets his 4yo ride in the front seat, seat belt optional, sometimes on an adult's lap. 2yo rides in an expired ffing britax that's poorly installed. It makes me sick.

D&L's-mommy · Apr 24, 2013

deleted

safeinthecar · Apr 24, 2013

An parent/child psych class (required class for SN teaching cert in Nevada) is where I learned not to get mad about it. Really, I'm that much of a nerd that even THAT class spoke carseat to me.

We did a huge amount of work in the concept of hierarchy of needs and it's relationship with conditioned response. During the process of this coursework, I realized that parents who aren't afraid of car crashes are conditioned to respond that way.

You get in a car hundreds of times without any crashes happening. This conditions you to believe on a very basic level that car rides are safe. At this stage you are the deer in the meadow, having inched out a little way at a time, completely unaware of the lion hiding just inside the woods. Maybe you saw a bear last week, maybe it's been a long winter and you almost starved, maybe you were shot at last week, but for whatever reason, you are looking in the wrong direction when you are checking for danger.

Realizing that this is human nature, not just stubborness really helped me to let go of the anger when people made bad carseat choices.

vlswager · Apr 24, 2013

I did respite for twins once and the foster dad came and picked them up with their Graco (probably expired because they looked super old) buckets. I put one in and the foster dad said to me I needed to really tighten it up because they just used it FOR THEIR FOUR YEAR OLD FOSTER DAUGHTER!!!! I almost threw up. I said something about it being to small for a four year old and he yelled at me and said she was small and to mind my own business.

My foster son (3yo, 37lbs and 39" so a big boy) was picked up once by a parent aide who had a poorly installed Costco APT for him. I told her absolutely not and installed my own car seat and explained to her why it was a poor fit. She also was going to use a RF convertible(not bad in and of it self) for his special needs 11 mo sister. She had it loosely belted and when I asked about it she said, Oh no problem I just push my passenger seat all the back and brace it!! Gave her my KeyFit to use.

I spoke with the supervisor and was told all their employees are trained on proper car seat use. There really was nothing I could do so I swallowed it and just pray whenever they go see their mom. I can only control so much.

Mercuria · Apr 25, 2013

henrietta said:
The thing that helps me the most is having compassion--understanding that most people who do such incredibly dumb things do love their kids, as much as I love mine, and that they actually do NOT know better. You might think they do, but obviously, they don't or they wouldn't do it.

:yeahthatsad:

My baby brother never got a booster because we honestly thought they were meant to boost him up to see out the windows. He wasn't unhappy with his view, so we didn't think he needed one. This was decades ago, but I can still believe that something like that would happen now.

It also didn't help that CRs basically didn't exist for me when I was growing up, so my parents had prior experience of it being "okay." I was born in Taiwan, and grew up in Oklahoma. I'm 30.

Athena · Apr 25, 2013

vlswager said:
I put one in and the foster dad said to me I needed to really tighten it up because they just used it FOR THEIR FOUR YEAR OLD FOSTER DAUGHTER!!!! I almost threw up. I said something about it being to small for a four year old and he yelled at me and said she was small and to mind my own business.

As long as we're venting ... then why did he tell you that? By telling you, he made it your business. It really upsets me when people tell me they're (illegally) endangering their children (e.g. forward facing under 1yo/20 pounds). Why do they tell me? Do they really think I'm going to tell them it's okay? I think it's really unfair of them to tell me because I find it very upsetting and I don't deserve that. Neither did you.

ausmommy11 · Apr 26, 2013

MotoMamaNH... if your doing the class in NH, I am waitlisted, so if there is a cancellation I might be in your class!

My facebook news feed is horrible these days

someone today posted a picture of her barely 6 month old son in an Evenflo Maestro.

Ozella21 · Apr 26, 2013

I have just started noticing the car seat use at my kids daycare, I usually leave the parking lot shaking my head and saying prayers. I am not a tech so I am not comfy saying anything to a random mom. I have mentioned a few things to other moms in my playgroup about coats and double checking the harness tightness. If asked about my seats I explain my reasons and leave it at that.

Kac · Apr 26, 2013

I guess I've learned to "accept" that I can only help so many people. Many people think it won't happen to them and honestly, most people don't even realize. I still hear people say things like "when I was little we didn't even have carseats!"

I look for the positives instead of the negatives. Yesterday I saw a dad driving two RFing (infant seat and toddler in a convertible) in a Jetta. I wanted to give him a high five! That's what I focus on- the good parts of child passenger safety.

I also believe there will always be misuse. It doesn't matter if we educate every human on this earth; there will be people who do not recognize the importance of car seat safety. That's why we educate who we can and hope that they make the right parental decision when it comes to their child's safety.

jeminijad · Apr 27, 2013

safeinthecar said:
You get in a car hundreds of times without any crashes happening. This conditions you to believe on a very basic level that car rides are safe. .

Yep. That is how our brains are wired. It takes specific circumstances to put someone in the right mental place to value stats/evidence over personal experience.

There are folks here that are die hard CPS advocates, but then make other choices that are dangerous - and you can't tell them otherwise, because they are conditioned. I have no doubt that there are aspects of my own life that I am looking at wrongly. We all have weak spots in our logic, reasoning and knowledge.

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