Car Seat Safety for Toddlers

Excited and nervous new parents carefully place their newborns in a rear-facing position as they drive home. Wanting to keep their children as safe as possible from injury, parents look toward trusted and established authorities for safety guidelines.  

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has issued a new policy statement advising parents to keep toddlers in rear-facing car seats until the age of two, or until the toddler exceeds the height or weight limit for the car seat. Prior to this new policy statement issued by the AAP in the April 2011 issue of Pediatrics, the AAP stated that parents could switch toddlers at the age of one with a 20-pound minimum weight from rear-facing to front-facing car seats. 

Many parents and pediatricians followed this recommendation and switched their toddlers based on that criteria. Based on studies regarding toddler seat placement and injury, the AAP now strongly recommends that parents strictly adhere to the new guidelines.

According to Dennis Durbin, M.D., a pediatric emergency physician and main author of the AAP policy statement: “A rear-facing child safety seat does a better job of supporting the head, neck and spine of infants and toddlers in a crash, because it distributes the force of the collision over the entire body.”