I kept her harnessed until about 6!

My oldest is almost 11 now. I found some pics from when she was 5.5, and DD was still harnessed at 5.5! Yay! Her harness is actually done up nice and snug with the chest clip in the proper place. Her shoulders are just under the top slots and I know I kept her harnessed until the manual said she was outgrown it, I am thinking she was around 6. The seat was a Century NextStep DX combo seat. I switched it to booster mode after that and she stayed that way until she outgrew it as a booster in height, then she was moved to a Graco backless turbo booster. She was wearing a thin jacket in the pic and I kind of had it jammed under one strap more than I'd ever do now, but the harness was tight! I remember she used to yell at me, "okay stop, getting squished now!".

I didn't know anything particular about extended harnessing and I don't recall the information being out there on the internet like it is now. I just knew that she was within the height/weight of the seat to still be harnessed, so why wouldn't I harness her? At this point, all of her friends were OUT of restraints entirely (not even in boosters) and she was still harnessed! Woohoo!

I will say that I am mighty lucky that she was a toothpick and got to stay harnessed for so long, because her seat only went to 40# harnessed!

Now that is cool!

Good for YOU! :thumbsup:

Updated 1st post with the pic!

GREAT pic; I think that's the biggest kid I've seen using a NextStep. Kudos to you for following best practice without knowing what you know now.

scatterbunny said:

GREAT pic; I think that's the biggest kid I've seen using a NextStep. Kudos to you for following best practice without knowing what you know now.

Click to expand...

When I bought mine, they told me that they sold VERY few in my city because people thought they were too expensive! I actually quite liked that seat. The harness was easy to tighten and easy to buckle. The straps were not twisty like the Eddie Bauer combo seat our friends had for their DD. And it was comfortable for DD and easy to install. It was narrow though, so not sure how good it would have been for huskier kids. And of course it's main drawback was that it only went to 52" I believe in booster mode (or whenever bottoms of ears were at top of seat I believe), so I had to get another booster when I originally thought this one was do us until she was out of a booster.

Yes, the NextStep was a pretty fabulous seat for its time.

Wow that's awesome!!!