Question Rear facing options for a small backseat

Unregistered · Jun 15, 2014

Hi,
My LO is outgrowing her infant seat, so it's time to start shopping for a convertible carseat. Safety is my only concern, other than my ridiculously small back seat ('05 Civic). I love everything about the Cleck Foonf, but highly doubt it will fit rear facing in the middle seat.

Hear are my questions.
1) should my first priority be to find a seat that can be installed rear facing in the middle as opposed to one that might have more safety features but can only be installed in an outboard seat due to size? Is inboard always safest?

2) I would like to RF for as long as possible, ideally well past 2 years, but I can see that some of the seats that might fit inboard in my car likely won't allow for this. When/if this happens is it safer to face her forward in the middle seat or buy a different convertible that will allow her to continue to rear face but in an outboard seat? Essentially which is safest, inboard forward facing or outboard rear facing?

3) Rear facing tether vs anti rebound bars. Do they do they same thing? Is one safer than the other?

Any help or suggestions is greatly appreciated! Just want my LO to be as safe as possible.

bree · Jun 15, 2014

Unregistered said:
Hi,
My LO is outgrowing her infant seat, so it's time to start shopping for a convertible carseat. Safety is my only concern, other than my ridiculously small back seat ('05 Civic). I love everything about the Cleck Foonf, but highly doubt it will fit rear facing in the middle seat.

Hear are my questions.
1) should my first priority be to find a seat that can be installed rear facing in the middle as opposed to one that might have more safety features but can only be installed in an outboard seat due to size? Is inboard always safest?

2) I would like to RF for as long as possible, ideally well past 2 years, but I can see that some of the seats that might fit inboard in my car likely won't allow for this. When/if this happens is it safer to face her forward in the middle seat or buy a different convertible that will allow her to continue to rear face but in an outboard seat? Essentially which is safest, inboard forward facing or outboard rear facing?

3) Rear facing tether vs anti rebound bars. Do they do they same thing? Is one safer than the other?

Any help or suggestions is greatly appreciated! Just want my LO to be as safe as possible.

Hi and welcome!

I wanted to bump your thread and share a link to a blog post that compares how much room convertible car seats take up in vehicles: http://carseatblog.com/22818/the-ul...ertible-space-comparison-review-size-matters/ as a good place to start for suggestions.

Car seats can fit differently depending the vehicle and the angle of the seats, but that link is a good place to start for suggestions. Most of those seats should get kids to the 3-4 year old range rear-facing.

1) Rear-facing in the center is safest, but if your carseat only works in the outboard seat rear-facing, that is still very, very safe.
2) Rear-facing outboard is safer than forward-facing in the center. (I had this same exact question when my 9 year old was 15 months old and I was trying to figure everything out. She wound up rear-facing until she was just over 4 years old.

).
3) I'll let someone else handle the question. For me, those things were icing on the top of the cake in terms of rear-facing safety, but my kids are so far past RF at this point, that I'm not sure what the current opinion is on them.

jgomez411 · Jun 15, 2014

Someone on here has an 05 Civic and I believe they rfed for quite a while. I'm hoping she will chime in here, I think it's Brigala.
How big is your child (height and weight)?
I have a 2012 Civic and had a Myride rfing in the center and my 37", 28# 3.5 year old still fits in it rfing.

sk8nut · Jun 18, 2014

No clue about the setting room in your Civic but my 2.5 year old is still comfortably rear facing in her Combi Coccoro. I was worried it wouldn't fit her long enough but I'm so glad I bought it over the far more expensive Foonf. We don't have it installed in a middle seat but as long as you can always access it from the side of the car opposite the shoulder belt, it would be a great choice.

Carrie_R · Jun 18, 2014

I don't like to talk a lot of statistics when I do checks, but I do always like to throw these numbers at parents.

Between the ages of 12 & 23 months, we know that kids are "5x" safer rear-facing. We say 5x, but the stat is actually 5.32 times - 532%.

Kids in the center, versus outboard, gain around 40% of a safety benefit. (It might be something like 43%, I can't recall.)

Even if you take that 40% away fro the 532%, you are still at kiddo being nearly 5x safer rear-facing outboard than forward-facing center.

As far as the Civic goes, I know I've had both a MyRide and Scenera in the back of a rental one. They were center/passenger, but I think the passenger seat was okay to use. I only had it for a single day. I would imagine a Radian with angle adjuster would fit in the middle. The Foonf would likely fit front-to-back, but would end up being awfully tall. A Graco clone would probably fit just fine. There are so many good extended rear-facing options now, finding one that will fit well is not nearly as much of a challenge as it was a few years ago

Unregistered · Jun 18, 2014

Thank you all so much for your replies. They are incredibly helpful.

Much appreciated!

Question Rear facing options for a small backseat

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