Everyone loves a good viral video of a baby dancing in their car seat. Everyone but me. Generally, these videos drive me crazy. Just look at these outrages: Ugh, wrong! NO! I don’t think so, Reggae Baby.

UNACCEPTABLE!

I admit that these babies are very cute. I know what you’re thinking: “This author of this article is a joyless monster,” but you’re wrong! I like to have fun AND am capable of delighting in cute babies. What I don’t like is that every single one of the babies in these videos is displaying unsafe—or at least not optimally safe use—of a car seat.

Car accidents are a leading cause of death for children under the age of 12 in the United States. Everyone knows that you need to use one, but you can’t stop there: the car seat needs to be used correctly to ensure that your baby is safe. Maybe this makes me a concern-trolling sanctimommy, but I have two major problems with the above videos:

1. Babies under the age of 2 should be in a rear-facing car seat.

2. The chest clip placement is wrong.

The first issue is a big one. While it seems that everyone knows that an infant needs to start out in a rear-facing seat, general wisdom is that they can start to face the front on or around their 1st birthday, which stems from a previous recommendation from 2002 by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). As of March 2011, though, the AAP “advises parents to keep their toddlers in rear-facing car seats until age 2, or until they reach the maximum height and weight for their seat.” Keeping your child in a rear-facing seat isn’t just a little bit safer: it could very likely be the difference between life and death in a serious car accident. A 2007 study in the journal Injury Prevention showed that children under age 2 are 75 percent less likely to die or be severely injured in a crash if they are riding rear-facing. A New York Times piece covering the updated AAP recommendation explains how much more severe an injury is to a baby in a front-facing seat:

“A baby’s head is relatively large in proportion to the rest of his body, and the bones of his neck are structurally immature,” said the statement’s lead author, Dr. Dennis R. Durbin, scientific co-director of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “If he’s rear-facing, his entire body is better supported by the shell of the car seat. When he’s forward-facing, his shoulders and trunk may be well restrained, but in a violent crash, his head and neck can fly forward.”

To put this in more horrifying terms, this means that forward-facing in a car seat can mean internal decapitation for a baby.

Despite all of the media coverage of the change in recommendation, parents are still turning their babies around far too soon. The reason for ignoring this advice seems to be that parents, ever-eager for their child’s next advancement, view front-facing in a car as a sort of milestone. In an interview with Parenting magazine, Ben Hoffman, M.D., an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and a child passenger safety technician, said, “Parents are always looking for the next stage of development because in every other scenario, that’s a good thing. With car safety seats, however, that's often not the case." As the mother of a 1-year-old, I understand the desire to see your child grow and change on schedule, but I don’t really understand why you would consider your own action--turning the car seat around--to be evidence of your baby’s flowering genius. In a similar manner, I wouldn’t insist that my baby is 6-feet tall when she is demonstrably much shorter than that.

There’s also an extremely pervasive myth that extended rear-facing causes “squished legs” for toddlers. First, of all, no it won’t.  A forward-facing child is actually much more likely to sustain serious leg injuries in a crash. Even if we’re discussing the merits of forward-facing car seats based on comfort alone, anyone who has ever flown on a commercial flight can likely attest to the fact that lack of legroom is generally not fatal.

Now for the other issue with these viral videos: the position of the chest clip. I think this common mistake is simply due to people believing that there isn’t a wrong way to do it. Well, that’s, um, wrong. There is a correct way to secure the chest clip. This video from TheCarSeatLady.com shows how to correctly position your baby (in this case, a newborn) in the seat, including where the chest clip should be positioned:

Why can’t this video go viral? Perhaps the Car Seat Lady can play some Taylor Swift and convince the newborn to fist pump. The chest clip position is so instrumental in allowing a car seat to do its job as “parachute,” but it’s a rarity to see a child in a YouTube clip whose chest clip is much higher than his or her belly button. As the Car Seat Lady explains, you can think of the chest clip as the “tickle clip,” because when it’s in the correct place, it will line up is such a way that if you were to run your finger across it, you’d be able to tickle your baby’s armpits. It’s not the best mnemonic device I’ve ever heard of, but I don’t have a better one, so “tickle clip” it is. Correct clip placement means that the shoulder straps are in the right place. If we refer to the above passage about how rear-facing is physiologically advantageous for a baby, it follows that the shoulder straps need to be positioned correctly in order to restrain your baby’s upper body in the event of a collision. I realize that range of motion is important when it comes to car seat dancing, but let’s try to prioritize.

So, please, America, keep your kids rear-facing until they’re 2, and make sure they’re strapped into their seat in a way that actually keeps them safe. I know this makes filming them for YouTube videos much more difficult, but I promise it’s worth it.

Resources:

AAP Updates Recommendation on Car Seats – Read the full AAP rear-facing recommendation.

The Car Seat Lady: Rear-Facing Seats – A great resource for all things car seat.

17 Convertible Car Seats With Extended Rear Facing – What it sounds like