Children should ride rear facing until age 2

It was a big deal for our kids: turning their seats around on their first birthday. Now the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is recommending that kids stay backward until they are two. This new advice comes from a pack of pediatricians who say it is safer for the babes.

The policy makes other safety recommendations as well. They believe children need to stay in a booster until they are 4 feet nine inches tall and between 8 and 12 years old. Additionally all children should stay in the backseat until they are 13 years old regardless of how tall they are or how much they weigh.

And statistics support the change. Car crashes kill more children aged four and over than other cause of death. A report in the journal Injury Prevention in 2007 showed children age two or less were 75% less likely to die or be severely injured if they were in a rear-facing seat.

“Parents often look forward to transitioning from one stage to the next, but these transitions should generally be delayed until they’re necessary, when the child fully outgrows the limits for his or her current stage. 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 distributed the force3 of the collision over the entire body,” explained Dr. De4nnis Durbin, lead author of the new policy.

Source: AAP, Pediatrics Journal, MedicalNewsToday