When a newborn joins your family, it’s an exciting and overwhelming time! In anticipation of the newest little’s arrival, there are so many items to research and purchase. But only one of those new items is a critical purchase that’s designed to keep your baby safe in the event of a crash — baby’s first car seat. We’ll look at some important factors to consider in choosing baby’s first ride.
At some point or another, every Little seems to test the boundaries when it comes to staying in their car seats. If you’ve got a little escape artist on your hands we’ve got a few tips and tricks that can help keep them safe and secure while they’re on the road.
Leverage is a critical piece of any car seat installation. Figuring out where to apply counter pressure in order to remove all of the slack from either the lower anchor webbing or the vehicle seat belt can be the most challenging part of an installation.
At Car Seats for the Littles, we draw a pretty hard line around what we will and won’t review. Please act surprised when I say that 99% of the time, our reviews are solely about car seats. So when a product comes along that isn’t a car seat, and you’re seeing it here, that’s because
All forward facing harnessed car seats have a top tether. The top tether is an essential piece of safety equipment and an essential part of protecting children who ride forward facing in their harnessed car seats.
Since the model year 1999, all new cars in the United States and Canada include at least three tether anchors to connect those top tethers. These anchors will be identified in your vehicle’s manual and often with a tether anchor symbol near the tether itself.
Top tethers are essential safety equipment for forward facing car seats. They’re generally easy to find — they’re connected at the back to the top of your child’s convertible, multimode, or combination car seat.
There are two parts to top tether togetherness. The top tether anchor on the car seat and the tether anchor on the vehicle itself.
Convertible car seats are two products in one — a rear facing car seat and a forward facing car seat. Some models also include a bonus third product — a booster mode. Like a DVD player built into a TV, or a crib that converts to a toddler bed, it’s convenient to bundle these products, but that means there are features that could be misused. All convertible and multimode seats include two belt paths — one for rear facing mode and one for forward facing mode.
We’ve all been there. You’re driving down the road, everything is going fine and then all of a sudden you have to slam on your brakes. While you’re working hard not to hit the car in front of you that stopped so suddenly, your purse on the seat next to you hits the floor, your child’s backpack on the empty vehicle seat next to them hits the back of the driver’s seat, and the stack of mail on the center console goes flying.
Don’t leave a tether strap hanging! A tether strap may have a long tail to accommodate anchors that are far from the vehicle seat. Be sure to appropriately bundle and store the excess so it doesn’t get caught hanging outside of the vehicle or create a strangulation hazard for a child.
Installing three car seats in one row, also known as three across, is one of the biggest challenges a growing family can face when it comes to car seats. The words “three across” might send fear down the spine of any caregiver or CPST, but they don’t have to!
