Watch Out! Toddlers Can Unbuckle Car Seats
More than half of parents say their kids (as young as 12 months) undid their straps -- some while the car was moving.
By Elena Donovan Mauer for TheBump.com
You know that car seat that came with a 50-page manual and took you an hour to install? Well, your kid might be able to get himself out of it at an earlier age than you thought. Yup, car seats are a total pain for us, but a cinch for some toddlers to unlatch, according to a new study from Yale School of Medicine.
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In the study, researchers surveyed 378 parents and found 51 percent of them reported that at least one of their children had unbuckled their car seat themselves. What's even scarier is that 75 percent unbuckled themselves for the first time at age three or younger -- some did it as young as 12 months old. And a shocking 43 percent did it while the car was moving!
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Researchers suggest that buckling mechanisms need to be reevaluated for safety, especially since kids that young don't know why it's not okay to unbuckle their seats. What's even more important is that parents are aware that it's a possibility, so we can check things twice. As if we don't have enough to be paranoid about!
Has your kid ever gotten out of his car seat? What did you do?
Photo: Shutterstock / The Bump
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