MissieCSZ
New member
Or lack of child seat use altogether?
Learning about car seat safety recently has me noticing/remembering the absolutely horrendous lack of parent awareness and appropriate usage of car seats. I teach elementary school and regularly see 5-year-olds hop into the front seat, unbuckled even; kids riding on parents' laps; toddlers being buckled in with an adult seat belt. I'm not a law enforcement officer, of course, and as the school has no driveway, these pickups are actually taking place on a public (and quite busy I might add) street that is not on school property.
Laws in my state aren't (IMO) strict enough on this, I believe it's just that they must RF until a year and that they be in some sort of restraint appropriate for their height/weight until age 7 or 57"...however, that is probably at least half of the children in a K-5 school that should not be using just a seat belt.
So I'm wondering what other teachers do, and what I could/should do, to encourage better car seat use, particularly in a low-income urban area with a large immigrant population. Would you nicely point out a car seat error to a parent if you saw them making one? I don't want to overstep my bounds or alienate parents, but I do think a lot of people simply don't know any better.
Learning about car seat safety recently has me noticing/remembering the absolutely horrendous lack of parent awareness and appropriate usage of car seats. I teach elementary school and regularly see 5-year-olds hop into the front seat, unbuckled even; kids riding on parents' laps; toddlers being buckled in with an adult seat belt. I'm not a law enforcement officer, of course, and as the school has no driveway, these pickups are actually taking place on a public (and quite busy I might add) street that is not on school property.
Laws in my state aren't (IMO) strict enough on this, I believe it's just that they must RF until a year and that they be in some sort of restraint appropriate for their height/weight until age 7 or 57"...however, that is probably at least half of the children in a K-5 school that should not be using just a seat belt.
So I'm wondering what other teachers do, and what I could/should do, to encourage better car seat use, particularly in a low-income urban area with a large immigrant population. Would you nicely point out a car seat error to a parent if you saw them making one? I don't want to overstep my bounds or alienate parents, but I do think a lot of people simply don't know any better.