Vent The big rf debate on birth board...

bpirof

New member
Well my July birth board on babycenter has officially hit the 1 year mark and the rf/ff debates have begun..... It's driving me insane... People are comparing rf to vaccines saying that vaccines aren't safe but they are still recommended... What?! What does that have to do with keeping your kid safe in a car?!?

How do you guys deal with pure ignorance? I've posted all the links to videos and crash tests that I can find and others in my bb have too but a ton of people are just too defensive to even listen :-/


Title is supposed to say "birth board" ugh stupid iPhone lol
 
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thepote

New member
Walk away.

Yup... Not worth it. People who are against best practices won't change their minds, and people who are open to the idea will seek out the info. You will just give CPS advocates a bad name if you get into it too much.

I just left an attachment parenting board where the leader, every time the car safety questions come up, goes on and on about how car seats are not AP and if we listened to the government nobody would co-sleep. Someone was looking for ~opinions~ about Whether to booster a six year old 38lb kid, and when I said six years old is an acceptable booster age she said if I am to remain on the board I need to be more respectful, because "many" there (ie, her) think that kids should be in boosters much earlier (her three were not quite 3yo when she put them Vivo's).

People are just strange when it comes to safety stuff.
 

Keeyamah

Active member
You've done what you can, and just hope that some lurker has listened to what you and the other ERFer's have posted.


Now you just walk away, like other say, and try not to let your blood boil.
 

bpirof

New member
You've done what you can, and just hope that some lurker has listened to what you and the other ERFer's have posted.

Now you just walk away, like other say, and try not to let your blood boil.

I think the worst part was one person who claimed to support rf until 2 was making excuses and supporting ff... Then she said she just likes a good debate... I very nicely pointe out that someone reading what she said could decide to ff because others say its okay.... She then apologized and said she hadn't thought of that... I
 

Persimmon

Active member
Re: The big rf debate on borth board...

It is like looking at car seat installs in the grocery store parking lot. For your mental health, it is best not to look and just keep on walking.

I think that some people tend to make decisions more on emotions and others more on data. The comparing vaccines to RF people are emotional decision makers. Car seat nerds seem to be more data-based decision makers. I have never had any luck making a rational argument with an emotion-based decision maker.

ETA: And the car seats are not AP thing is just incomprehensible.
 

bpirof

New member
It is like looking at car seat installs in the grocery store parking lot. For your mental health, it is best not to look and just keep on walking.

I think that some people tend to make decisions more on emotions and others more on data. The comparing vaccines to RF people are emotional decision makers. Car seat nerds seem to be more data-based decision makers. I have never had any luck making a rational argument with an emotion-based decision maker.

ETA: And the car seats are not AP thing is just incomprehensible.

Your completely right about the emotional/date decision making... I guess I can't save the world after all ;-) I suppose I can hope that some people who didn't know either way saw what I wrote and kept rf :)
 

Phineasmama

New member
Re: The big rf debate on borth board...

It is like looking at car seat installs in the grocery store parking lot. For your mental health, it is best not to look and just keep on walking.

I think that some people tend to make decisions more on emotions and others more on data. The comparing vaccines to RF people are emotional decision makers. Car seat nerds seem to be more data-based decision makers. I have never had any luck making a rational argument with an emotion-based decision maker.

ETA: And the car seats are not AP thing is just incomprehensible.

Oh didn't you know? Strapping your kid down is just MEAN, and you should let them be freeeeee to express themselves!
 

krasota

Well-known member
Re: The big rf debate on borth board...

\

ETA: And the car seats are not AP thing is just incomprehensible.

It's way old school in the crunchy community, going decades back. The idea is that babe needs to be in arms, not in a device. Thing is, I follow AP principles based on evidence. And I also follow evidence based safety practices in the car. . . so, carseat.
 

Phineasmama

New member
When cave women slept with their babies on bear skin rugs in caves, they also did not have cars LOL. So...yeah. I would rather just see my child live to adulthood thankyouverymuch.

I mean it's just as ridiculous as "the government is forcing us to use car seats for no reason other than they make so much money off of them!!"
 

bpirof

New member
Oh didn't you know? Strapping your kid down is just MEAN, and you should let them be freeeeee to express themselves!

LOL I was not aware, however now that I am I am throwing that darn carseat contraption right in the garbage! Stupid government trying to steal my money!! LOLOL

Sorry.... Couldn't help myself... It's been one of those days lol :)
 

Persimmon

Active member
Re: The big rf debate on borth board...

It's way old school in the crunchy community, going decades back. The idea is that babe needs to be in arms, not in a device. Thing is, I follow AP principles based on evidence. And I also follow evidence based safety practices in the car. . . so, carseat.

It seems to me like RF in a harness is more like being in a sling and a booster is more like a stroller. :p But yeah, I am with you, I follow AP principles based on evidence.

But now that I know the gov't is only trying to steal my money, I'll just hold DS in my lap.
 

thepote

New member
Oh didn't you know? Strapping your kid down is just MEAN, and you should let them be freeeeee to express themselves!

Yes, apparently it's not any different than CIO when they don't want to be in the car seat, and therefore using a car seat is against the principles of AP.

When the Freakanomics thing came out she posted it on the board and said see, I was right.

Anyway, I left the board because she was all sorts of cray-cray in a lot of different ways... It's too bad because other moms on there were normal and insightful without being blindly idealistic.
 

bpirof

New member
So I couldn't walk away but I couldn't fight this one out any longer... So I posted on the July 2011 board asking those mommas to share info about their 2 year olds that are rf.... And surprisingly they did, a lot of 2011 babies are rear facing! I would say the majority of them! Woohoo! The best was this response that one mom posted, I couldn't have said it better myself :)

"DD just turned 2 and i will keep Her RFing till she outgrows the limits of her car seat. Hopefully as close to four as possible.

Aside from extreme car sickness, there is no good reason to turn your child FFing before the age of 2, the longer the better.

Research has shown rear facing to be 500% safer up to two years of age. Do benefits disappear after that? Not at all. Rear facing is always safer, even for adults like you and me.

500% may sound like a lot but numbers can be hard to grasp. In 100 collisions of rear facing kids, 8 rear facing children will die or become seriously injured. 92 will walk away fine. In 100 collisions with forward facing kids, 40 will die or become seriously injured. 60 will walk away fine. Those are large differences which help to save lives.

The neck vertebrae of a young child is very delicate due to the whole neck area being underdeveloped. When a baby is born, neck vertebrae is “composed of separate portions of bone joined by cartilage, in other words, the baby’s skeleton is still soft”. The cartilage turns into bone during the first three years of a baby’s life. The hardening process of the bones, called ossification, continues until puberty. Muscles and ligaments in the neck develop in a similar way.

Young children can’t handle the incredibly high forces in a collision while forward facing. Not even at speeds which we adults may think are minor. Rear facing a child give fantastic protection, so great fatalities are difficult to find in collisions with a correctly installed seat.

In a forward facing seat, a child’s shoulders and body are held back by the harness. But neck and head area are thrown violently forward putting tremendous force on the yet undeveloped head, neck and spine. For a rear facing child a collision is relatively undramatic with the whole back of child absorbing the impact forces. Head and neck and pressed back into the seat and remain well protected.

In Sweden, they've practiced ERFing since 1965. The law is 3 and 33 pounds but most Rf till 4. In the past 30 years, there have been under 5 deaths with children who were in a properly installed RFing car seat. Reading further, those deaths were in unsurvivable accidents, usually where the vehicles were submerged in water.

Do your research. When we know better, we do better."
 

bpirof

New member
Just so you can see where this thread went... My new favorite quotes:

"It can't be 500% safer, you can only go up to 100%"

"I haven't seen anything here that convinces me it's any safer to put them backwards "


Blahhhhhhhhh
 

MommyShannon

New member
It's no win but you can only have 100% of something, but you absolutely can have 500% more which is the same as saying 5 times safer. Blah, blah, blah. If you make $10 an hour and then $20 an hour, your pay is 200% of what it was or 2 times what it was. Seriously though, if somebody watches a rf and ff crash test and doesn't see any benefit, they are way past denial and words won't change anything.
 

Athena

Well-known member
Just so you can see where this thread went... My new favorite quotes:

"It can't be 500% safer, you can only go up to 100%"

"I haven't seen anything here that convinces me it's any safer to put them backwards "


Blahhhhhhhhh

Someone failed math. I hope the one who doesn't understand how % work isn't planning to home school their children. :D

You've done what you can do.
 

bree

Car-Seat.Org Ambassador
While I know you can never convince some people, and mostly I think it's worth walking away at a certain point on birth boards, this 1 minute video seems to help people understand and might be worth sharing if you haven't already:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sssIsceKd6U"]Rear facing vs forward facing position in the car - YouTube[/ame]
 

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