Four Non-Safety Related Reasons to Leave your Child's Carseat Rear Facing

I have long been a proponent of extended rear facing for my girls car seats.  There are lots of great resources online that support the benefits of extended rear facing and the American Academy of Pediatric recommends that you leave your child rear facing until at least 2 years old.  My goal for my girls was rear facing until 4 yeas old.  My oldest will be 4 later this month but a few weeks ago we noticed that she had hit the height limit for her seat so we decided to turn her around.  After a few weeks of having her rear facing I noticed that there are actually benefits to rear facing that are not safety related and so I wanted to share four of them today.

Seat Kicking

One of the first things I noticed when we turned my daughter around was that she can now easily kick the seat in front of her. This kicking can come from random feet wiggling, angry kicking or kicking just to annoy mommy.  While rear facing the only seat they can kick is their own :).

Seat Sharing

I have daughters that are only 17 months apart and very close in size so it has always been a benefit that they can use the car seats interchangeably.  Some days one wants the pink seat, some days they both want the cow seat so we play car seat roulette.  I also like that if I only have one child with me I can put them in either seat.  With one forward facing and one rear facing now we can't share seats :).

No More Sneaking Snacks

With both of my girls rear facing, as long as I eat quietly and don't slurp any drinks they are none the wiser to my snacking.  Now there is no way I can give them apple slices and eat a doughnut without my forward facing daughter noticing the inequality and announcing it to the whole car!  This bring ups the dilemma of no doughnuts for everyone or giving them a doughnut too (note that munchkins can be individually purchased, this has solved the problem so far).  It also really adds on to the guilt of everything I eat or drink in the car if you have someone always asking "what is that you are eating/drinking?".

Back Seat Driver

Now that my daughter can see where we are going instead of where we have been I have a mini back seat driver.  She knows that red means stop and green means go and will call me out if I sit at a green light for too long before advancing.  She also likes to announce to everyone else in the car (namely her sister that can't see) things that are going on or how I should be doing things.  She is pulling off the "three-nager" designation perfectly.

Well there you have four very good reasons to leave your child rear facing as long as possible.  If the safety reasons for rear facing don't have you convinced maybe a few more months of eating your doughnut in peace will :).