Carseat Problem??!!

sharonnmik

Ok so my son is a year old and we have a Britax Roundabout. Now the one we have only holds a child up to 40 inches my son is already 31 1/2 inches. We just got the carseat in April 2009. Did anyone else have this problem, where they child grew out of the careset so fast! I thought I would get atlest 2-3 years out of it.

emiliemadison

The Roundabout does have a short shell, which means that most kids will outgrow it by height long before they're ready for a booster (like....years and years before) and it's not a good seat for extended rear facing. But your child wont grow 8 inches overnight. And, the standing height of your child isnt actually that important. What matters, is that your child has at least 1 inch of space between the top of his head and the top of the hard shell of the seat. You've got some time. But when you are ready for a new seat, the link in my sig has recommendations.

sharonnmik

Thats the problem there is about an inch of space(maybe alittle bit more, but less than 2 inches) between the top of his head and top of the seat now! My son was 22 1/2 inches at birth and one year later he is 31 1/2, it's really my own fault, should have gone with a bigger seat! LOL 

emiliemadison

This is a guide on how to measure (which I was doing wrong until I saw it). HTH:

How to tell if your RF seat is outgrown by height:

It seems that how to tell when a RF (rear-facing) seat is outgrown is a fairly common question. It can be really hard to tell when a RF seat is outgrown, and a common misconception is looking from the front of the carseat to see if it is outgrown. The seat will pretty much always look outgrown from the front before it is truly outgrown because you need to look from the side.

This picture shows the correct way to measure. A line is drawn perpendicular to the shell/back of the carseat over the top of the child's head (#1). Then a second line is drawn out from the top of the shell parallel to the first line (#2).

Now measure the distance between the two lines. When there is *less than one inch*, the rearfacing restraint is outgrown by height.





This picture shows a common misconception with how people measure to check for the one inch rule. The line is drawn parallel to the ground from the top of the shell. You can see how this would appear to show the seat is outgrown, however it is incorrect to measure this way and this child still has room to grow in this seat.




The best place to measure how much room is left in the seat is when the seat is installed in the vehicle. They're usually more upright in the house and the more upright they are the more shell there will be above the child's head making your measurements not acurate.