Will an 18" harness height take an over 95th percentile child to booster age?

diaperjoys

New member
Title pretty much says it all. We're evaluating seat choices. How much harness height to I realistically need to get our kiddo to age 6/7 before switching her to a booster? Will an 18 inch harness height be enough, or do I need to be looking at the seats with a 20" harness?

She's 3, and maxing out her Roundabout 55 by both height and weight. I need to replace the seat with something that has enough harness to get her to booster age. If I can find a convertible with sufficient harness height I'll rear face her until she is closer to 4.

Thanks for the tips!
 
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Dillipop

Well-known member
Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on how her torso grows. How tall are the slots on the roundabout she is outgrowing?


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diaperjoys

New member
Oh. Why didn't I think to check that? The top slots on the Roundabout 55 are 16", and she has maybe 1/4" before she is even with those slots.

She just turned 3, and my guess is that she will be slower than average to have the control to be booster-ready. So, probably 7ish. I don't see two inches of harness height lasting her 4 years.
 

Dillipop

Well-known member
I agree. I think in the preschool years, an inch of torso height a year is the average growth. I think you're looking for 19 or 20 inch top slots if you want to guarantee age 6 or 7 in a harness.


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aept

New member
My oldest son was/is up in the 90s for his height percentiles and he needed the Britax Frontier 85 (at the time, there are some other choices now) to get him to 6.5 years old when we went to full time in boosters. He outgrew the seats with an 18" shoulder around age 4.5-5.

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MUTigers

New member
My oldest son was/is up in the 90s for his height percentiles and he needed the Britax Frontier 85 (at the time, there are some other choices now) to get him to 6.5 years old when we went to full time in boosters. He outgrew the seats with an 18" shoulder around age 4.5-5.

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This is my daughter too. She's in a frontier clicktight. I think she may have a bit of harness height left at almost 6yo but not much.

I will say too, at 3 I thought she'd need to be harnessed forever. She was so active, always squirmy in the car, no impulse control. She slowly got better then started kindergarten at almost 5.5 and instantly was a ton better. At 5.5yo we started using the frontier in booster mode and she's been great ever since! She turns 6 in two weeks and I'll probably take the harness off (I've kept it on as a reminder that we can always go back.)


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diaperjoys

New member
This is all very helpful, thank you! We've decided to keep using the two rf seats we have until she totally maxes out every smidge of rf usability. If she has 1/4 inch in the Roundabout by height, we'll keep her there until she grows that 1/4 inch. She has about 2 pounds in the Boulevard clicktight, and we'll wait out those two pounds - summer helps a bit, as clothes are lighter weight.

Then we'll flip the Boulevard forward facing, and get a Frontier/Pioneer to replace the Roundabout and be all the way forward facing at that point.

Honestly, I've been very impressed at how far we've made it in the Roundabout. We first got that seat for foster care - we needed something narrow enough to fit a tight spot in a vehicle, something that would accommodate a fairly wide variety of kiddos. It has served us well - we ended up adopting, and I never would have dreamed that that seat would have gotten such a big build kiddo all the way past their third birthday. She's very proportionate - not leggy or super big torso. Just evenly big all over.

Thanks for all the help!
 

diaperjoys

New member
Some "installation magic" happened today. I went and measured my daughter again in her Roundabout rf. She had a little less than an inch of shell above her head, so I did the planned turnaround. I had already tested her ff in the seat, with it wedged tightly ff, but not installed - 1/4" of growing room. That isn't much, but we don't have her next seat yet, so I needed that tiny bit of room.

Then, when I installed the seat today, and buckled her in again - she has nearly two inches of grow room! I don't know where the extra space came from, but there it is. Now we have some more time to reevaluate seat choices, which is great!
 

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