Thursday, March 31, 2011

Rear Facing or Forward Facing

I remember when Easton turned 12 months old, I couldn't WAIT to turn him around so he could see out! In fact, we turned Raquelle around at 10.5 months for a long road trip so I could access her and she would be more entertained. I came across these videos and they've changed my thinking tremendously!!! Check it out for yourself...I guess the government is now strongly suggesting/requiring children to face the rear until at least 2 years of age.

Animated Video

Real crash test video

The AAP's policy will appear in the April edition of Pediatrics (their peer-reviewed scientific journal) and is based on research such as a 2007 study in Injury Prevention showing that children under 2 are 75% less likely to die or be severely injured in a crash if they are riding rear-facing. This is a finding, by the way, that comes to no surprise to countries such as Sweden, which has the world's lowest highway fatality rate for children under 6 and requires children to be rear-facing until age 4.

Just thought I'd pass it along!!

2 comments:

The Boggs Family said...

Very interesting. This is awesome information- thanks for passing it on!

Abby said...

When Avery was born I saw something similar and ended up keeping her rear facing until almost 2....also because she wasn't 20 pounds until 18 months anyway. Then I saw some videos showing why kids should stay in five point harnesses until six!! So my four years old still are.....however I couldn't go back and put my older kids back in. It is really interesting though to see the videos. I'm keeping my older two in boosters though. It's scary!!