It is National Child Passenger Safety Week

I am passionate about many things. Most of them deal with children. I am against school bullying and teach my children how to make sure no one is left out (I love the stories Pumpkin comes home with from school because I know I have done well listening to them.) I am crazy about my cloth diapers and baby wearing, I will share my knowledge with anyone willing to listen. However all those things seem small when it comes to my other passion. I am known in my family for being a "Car Seat Nazi." I read online about different car seats, I learned about extended rear facing (ERF), I learned about extended harnessing (EH) and I thought wow, why don't they do a better job of informing people of these things?

One of my favorite resources is Carseat.org. There is loads of information you can find there. However this week September 16-22 it is National Child Passenger Safety Week. This means you will find some of the most up to date information out there pretty easily. Britax one of the bigger car seat companies out there is sharing some of the more common mistakes and how to make easy corrections on their Facebook page this week. Here are two images I got from them. . .

The second picture is commonly done by older children still in car seats, in my car usually a friendly reminder will cause them to pull that clip back up to their chest, this does not always work so there are other ideas out there you can find, like those shoulder straps that are meant to give cushion to your kids to sleep placed below the chest clip, keeps them from being able to have it near their groin.
If you want to know the current guidelines from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, they posted this picture on their Facebook page...

I probably go overboard but I try to keep my kids rear facing until they hit the limits for their seats to be so. Seats these days can rear face until 40lbs, and can most of the time still have plenty of life once turned forward facing. I also by choice keep my kids harnessed until they hit the limits of those seats harnessed. I feel even though I know I drive safely I cannot rely on everyone else to do the same. An accident is just that an accident and I would rather have my kids in a seat over protecting them than in a seat that has a high chance of ejecting them. I always panic that I don't have my seats installed correctly, and what do you know Saturday the 22nd of September 2012 is National Car Seat check day!! So I can go to a local place within certain hours and they will check my seat install for FREE, which is always the price, but this means I don't have to call and make an appointment, that I may be late for and therefore give up. You can check for a place local to you here : http://www.nhtsa.gov/cps/cpsfitting/ak/map/FindFitting.cfm?q_State&q_Zip=40229&SpecialWeek_Stations=on This is set for my local places doing the checks this weekend (so Louisville peeps this is the place to go) I highly suggest getting the seats checked if you have never done so or have gotten a new vehicle recently. Check it out, it is only your kids after all.