The variety and sheer number of child seats available can be overwhelming. Doing research before you hit the stores will definitely save time.
An infant seat with a 5-point safety harness offers your newborn the utmost protection.

How difficult can it be to get a good child seat that you and your youngster can live with? Plenty difficult.

Picking a new seat

Here are some guidelines from child safety advocates:

• Be sure any seat you're looking at has a label showing it's in compliance with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 213.

   

• The seat should be designed for your child's age and size. An infant-only seat is for newborns up to 12 months and 20 pounds. When a child turns 1 and weighs about 20 pounds, a larger seat is needed. Convertible seats are another option. Safety booster seats are recommended for children aged 4 and older who weigh more than 40 pounds. Read the seat manufacturer's information to be sure you're aware of which seat fits your child.

  
  

Note that different seats require different positioning in a vehicle. A rear-facing infant seat should only be positioned so it faces rearward. It should never be put in front of an active frontal airbag. A front-facing, toddler-only child seat should only face forward. Again, it should never be put in front of an active frontal airbag. Check the manufacturer instructions to be sure you're putting the child seat in its proper position.

• Keep your store receipt and check the store's return policy. If the seat doesn't work well for you and your vehicle, you may want to return it.

• Obviously, it's best if you can test the seat out with your child to ensure a good fit. However, there are times—when the child is not yet born, for example—when this is impossible. But remember to be flexible. If your child is born early and the doctor advises a preemie bed and all you have is a standard newborn seat, don't try to “make do” with your seat. Preemies typically need to lay flat, and there are special seats for them. Check with your doctor and/or hospital to find out where to get a preemie seat.

• The same holds true if your child has been injured and now is wearing a cast that makes it difficult or impossible for him or her to ride in the usual child safety seat, or if your child has spina bifida. Check with your doctor and/or hospital about getting a child seat that will accommodate your youngster.

Picking a used seat
A number of sources recommend never putting your child in an older-model car seat, since the technology and safety features may be outdated, and the seat may have already been weakened or damaged in a crash and therefore ineffective. That said, many people obtain their child seats through hand-me-downs, garage sales or consignment shops. If you are going to use a secondhand seat, most of the guidelines above apply to used seats. There are a couple of other guidelines, too:

• Make sure the used seat has not been in a crash. Ask the owner of the seat about this, since you may not always be able to see visible damage. If you are not able to confirm that the seat is crash-free, don't take the seat. Better to be safe than sorry. Child seat experts say crash stresses can weaken a seat and make it less effective in protecting a child the next time there's a crash.

• Get all the pieces and parts that came with the seat when it was new as well as the instructions and any other manufacturer material. You will need them to know how to properly use the seat. You also will want to register with the manufacturer as the new owner of the seat, so you are notified if there is a recall.

• Children eat in their seats, and sometimes the crumbs and liquids work their way into child seat clips and clasps. Test them all out to ensure they're in good working order.

Check out your vehicle
Sometimes, the problem isn't the child seat. It's the vehicle you're putting it into:

• Read the vehicle owner's manual to learn what the automaker recommends for child seat safety.

• Children should ride in the back seat of today's vehicles, away from the frontal airbags. Child seat experts say the middle position in the rear seat is the safest for little ones. Besides keeping youngsters away from frontal airbags, it also provides some space on either side in the event of a side crash. And it's a spot where you might be able to keep your little one out of the hot sun.

• Vehicles with easy access to the back seats tend to make it easier for parents to reach children, position the seats with less struggle and check them regularly. Vehicles with two passenger doors and cramped rear quarters can challenge parents' efforts to properly position child seats.

• If your child must ride in the front seat—because the vehicle doesn't have a back seat, for example—be sure the frontal airbag is turned off. Pickup trucks typically come with a key-activated cutoff switch. Two-seat sports cars from makers such as Mercedes-Benz and Porsche have optional child safety seats that automatically detect if a child seat is placed on the front passenger side, and automatically deactivate the frontal airbag when that happens.

• Today's cars, sport-utility vehicles, trucks and minivans have a dizzying array of seat shapes and contours. In general, the more contoured a seat is, the more difficult it is to position a child seat on it firmly, according to safety officials. The flatter the seat cushion, the more likely it is to position the seat so it's firmly planted and doesn't wiggle.

• The slope of the seatback can affect child seat effectiveness, too, especially where newborns are concerned. And, positioning of splits in bench seats can be another factor in how well a child seat fits in a car, according to Lori Miller, highway safety specialist at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

• Seat belt connections—where they're located in the seats—can cause problems, too. Some are located a bit forward of where the seat cushion meets the seatback; others are at the joint where the two meet. The differences in both seat contours and seat belt connectors, of course, don't have anything to do with child seats in general. “The seats in vehicles are designed for the comfort of adults,” Miller said.

Putting a seat to the test
So what do you do, now that you've found a seat you're interested in and you've examined the insides of your car? Test the child seat out in your vehicle, following the installation instructions provided by the manufacturer:

• Remember to get your knee into the seat and really push to get it in proper position.

• Lock the seat firmly into place, ensuring it doesn't wiggle more than an inch forward or sideways.

• Put your child into the seat and fasten all the belts, harnesses and clasps, following the instructions from the manufacturer.

What's your comfort level?
How do you feel? Exhausted by a 15-minute struggle with that seat, or pleased that the process went so smoothly? How does your little one look? Comfortable, or ready to bolt?

Make sure you dress your child comfortably. You know how encumbered you feel when you're riding in a car with an awkward-feeling outfit on. The same is true of your youngster. Be sure clothing allows the crotch strap on the child seat to be fastened properly between the legs.

And don't add that blanket or stuffed animal until your little one is snugly positioned and properly belted in. An animal or blanket can move out of position as you drive, leaving your child loosely strapped in—a condition you want to avoid.

Federal safety officials advise that children should be in the back seat, away from frontal airbags. Here are the reasons.

It's not the law but officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have widely publicized their “advisory” that children age 12 and under shouldn't sit in the front seat in front of an airbag.

Several factors
Is there something magical about age 13 that automatically makes children fit to sit up front? Are they big enough at that age to withstand the airbag forces or grown up enough to behave up front?

It's a little of both, actually. NHTSA officials said the agency basically selected age 12 for the cutoff after reviewing crash statistics that showed problems with frontal airbags seemed to decline as children get older.

Maturity weighs in
Behavior is part of the problem. “Kids play with the radio,” move around and tend not to be in proper position when an airbag deploys in a crash, NHTSA spokeswoman Liz Neblett said.

Proximity to the airbag is a big issue in airbag-caused injuries and deaths; so is being properly positioned in the seat.

“Theoretically, we didn't know how successful you can be . . . in teaching a child never to lean forward” in the front seat, said a NHTSA researcher who asked not to be named, explaining why the agency felt obligated to list an age.

Don't discount behavior out of hand. Deborah Stewart, publisher of Safe Ride News in the Seattle area, said a camera trained on a child in the back seat during one test showed the youngster “didn't sit properly for more than 30 seconds.” Stewart said the NHTSA recommendation, while somewhat arbitrary in its age selection, helped the agency send a simple, important message to parents.

Size matters, too
The NHTSA researcher also said that the agency recognizes that “somewhere in that area” of 11 and 12 years of age, “you have bigger children” who are more akin to adults in size.

Nancy Delaney, chairperson of the Metro Detroit Safe Kids Coalition, said physical stature matters because it's difficult for children to keep their distance from that front airbag and keep their back against the seatback if their feet don't touch the floor. “They tend to scrunch down” in the seat so their feet touch the floor and then they're out of position for the airbag, she said.

On the other hand, she noted that there also could be a problem with children who pass age 12 and still are rather small. Parents think they can automatically ride up front, but perhaps they should reconsider. “You get these kids who are two-thirds leg [in body size] and they're willowy,” she said. “I'm really tempted to keep them in a car seat” in the back seat, where they would be safest.

A simple truth that saves lives
An often-overlooked fact, NHTSA advises that all people, including adults, are safest in the back seat, regardless of size or behavior. Why? The most common crash is frontal, and by sitting in the back seat you have more vehicle mass in front of you to absorb crash forces.