When do kids ride in booster seat

Make sure children are properly buckled in a car seat, booster seat, or seat belt—whichever is appropriate for their age, height, and weight. You can get help installing them from a certified child passenger safety technician external icon. Find a child passenger safety technician near you. View Larger. Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link.

Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. Keep Child Passengers Safe. Minus Related Pages. Know the Stages. Use a rear-facing car seat from birth until age 2—4. Infants and toddlers should be buckled in a rear-facing car seat with a harness, in the back seat, until they reach the maximum weight or height limit of their car seat. This offers the best possible protection. Check the car seat manual and labels on the car seat for weight and height limits.

Never place a rear-facing car seat in the front seat. At a minimum, your child should weigh at least 40 pounds before using a belt-positioning booster car seat. You can safely make the switch only if your child is at least 35 inches tall and can sit in the booster seat with their back against the vehicle seat and their knees bent comfortably at the edge of the seat cushion. Some 4-year-olds may be mature enough to properly sit in a booster seat for the entire car trip with the seat belt correctly positioned across the chest and shoulder, but many will be much older.

Your child can safely sit in a booster seat only if they can ride without slouching, leaning to the side, or tucking the shoulder belt under their arm or behind their back. You know your child best. Just as there are requirements for when a child is ready to move into a booster seat, there are also rules for when a child is able to stop using a booster seat altogether.

And these rules may surprise you. Once again, the laws and requirements are different for each state, but typically, your child should remain in a booster until they reach the age of eight and a standing height of at least 4 feet 9 inches.

The best way to decide if your child can safely ride in a belt-positioning booster seat or without a booster seat at all is to check the position of the seat belt. Can the child sit comfortably with their back against the seat and their legs bent at the knee over the edge of the seat? Ready to make the switch? Learn about the pros and cons between the different types of booster seats so you can make the best decision for your child. It's easy enough to check the weight and height limits of various boosters to see if your little one will fit according to manufacturer instructions.

Before deciding whether your child is ready to move on from a car seat to a booster, you must first understand the difference between the two. Car seats use a five-point harness to restrain the child. Booster seat age refers to the age of a child at which they are ready to move from a car seat to a booster seat. The appropriate age is generally at least 4 years old. If you can safely keep your child in a harnessed car seat for a while longer, do it.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that kids use a car seat until they reach the maximum height or weight for that five-point harness.

Three-year-olds are not ready to ride in a booster seat, even if they fit within the manufacturer's height and weight guidelines. To sit in a booster seat, children should:. Many convertible and harness-to-booster car seats have harnesses rated to hold kids up to 65 pounds. In fact, children in the U. Thanks to advances in car seat safety technologies, four-year-olds that might have been moved into a booster 10 years ago can still safely ride in a rear-facing car seat.

Even fairly tall children can remain rear-facing through toddler years and then switch to a forward-facing harness until kindergarten age. Any step up in car seats—from rear-facing to forward-facing, from the harness to booster—is actually a step down in safety. The 5-point harness spreads crash forces over more points on a child's body, lessening the potential force any one part of the body must take in a crash. While some high-back booster seats have a minimum weight of 30 pounds, kids should weigh at least 40 pounds before riding in any booster seat.

From a practical standpoint, parents find that it is easier to keep the child sitting properly when in a car seat than in a booster; in a booster the child can unbuckle themselves more easily than in a car seat.

They can also lean and slouch, which is dangerous. They can't do that in a car seat when the 5-point harness is properly adjusted. The seatbelt cannot protect a child who is not in the proper position. Most children cannot be trusted to sit properly until at least five years old. Many parents find that their child is actually much older than four before they can be expected to sit still in a booster. If your vehicle has lap-only seatbelts in the rear seats, keep your child in a harnessed car seat as long as possible.

Harnessed seats can be installed with a lap-only belt. Extended harnessing, or using a harnessed car seat with a higher weight limit, is vastly preferable to moving a child into a lap-only seatbelt.

If you have a pre vehicle with a lap-only belt in the center, it is important to know that car seats can safely go there but boosters and big kids should not.

Boosters and big kids need the protection of a shoulder belt. Therefore, if you need to have a kid ride in the center, make sure to use a car seat with a 5-point harness there.

If you think your child is outgrowing their harnessed car seat, first be sure that you're checking the right signs to judge the fit. Most children outgrow harnessed car seats by height long before they outgrow by weight, particularly with the pound seats.