No More Lap Babies!

[sam_gordon]

Until I came onto the Disboards, I had never heard of anyone using a car seat on a plane. I have honestly never ever seen this.

I've done it a couple times. At the time, my kids were older than 2, and even if they were younger, we would have gotten them their own seat. Primarily because I wouldn't want to deal with the weight of an infant in my lap for 2+ hours.

 

[WDWDancer]

My 3 month old screams bloody murder in her car seat nonstop....once she is out it's all giggles and smiles.

 

[pigletgirl]

Very logical.

Our son uses a batting helmet with a face mask. Some children on the team do, some do not. It's up to the parent.

We also special order our son's football helmet. Two other parents also did this last year, and I think more will start doing it. Pricey, but worth every penny.

We can't shield them from danger 24/7, but we can use the resources given to us.

A special ordered football helmet for special snowflake!

You absolutely cannot shield your child from every single danger out there, including choosing to hold your baby on the plane. If the plane were crashing, regardless if the baby was in his/her carseat the chances of them surviving would be very small.

Living in fear isn't healthy. What does that teach your son?

 

[theworldneedscolor]

A special ordered football helmet for special snowflake!

You absolutely cannot shield your child from every single danger out there, including choosing to hold your baby on the plane. If the plane were crashing, regardless if the baby was in his/her carseat the chances of them surviving would be very small.

Living in fear isn't healthy. What does that teach your son?

So it's not okay to judge parents who chose to have lap babies, but it's okay to judge parents who do choose to take an extra precaution?

 

[pigletgirl]

So it's not okay to judge parents who chose to have lap babies, but it's okay to judge parents who do choose to take an extra precaution?

There is a fine line between standard safety precautions and going over the top to "ensure" nothing will happen to their kid.

 

[kidshop]

A special ordered football helmet for special snowflake!

You absolutely cannot shield your child from every single danger out there, including choosing to hold your baby on the plane. If the plane were crashing, regardless if the baby was in his/her carseat the chances of them surviving would be very small.

Living in fear isn't healthy. What does that teach your son?

I think she just wants to protect the brain inside her son's skull? Didn't Seinfeld do a bit on that? I don't see the reason to cut down someone for offering extra protection? Sounds smart to me. Maybe if the kid couldn't play at all b/c the parent was in fear...

 

[smitch425]

A special ordered football helmet for special snowflake!

That was rude and unnecessary. There is nothing wrong with ordering a properly fitting helmet. People do it all the time. When DS played baseball, we bought him his own batting helmet because the ones available from the league were old and huge. That doesn't make him a snowflake. That makes him a kid who has parents that care about safety. Sheesh...

 

[goodeats]

When my ds was 18 months old we had a terrible flight that involved a landing at a different airport and then a 4 hour bus ride! I had his seat and was very disturbed about the lack of seat belts on the bus. For some reason we had 2 bungi cords with us and I rigged up straps for his seat so he would be secure.. Not ideal, but better than flying loose through the bus! So , no I would not use transportation if could avoid it that I involved my child not in a car seat.

I know this posted pages ago, but this stuck out to me. Most buses don't have seat belts. In CA most kids are in car seats or boosters until they are 8 yo. Are families really supposed to avoid taking the bus until then? Personally, if I was on that bus I would have thought you were being unsafe by using the bungee cords.

We flew with DD1 when she was 3 months old and yes, we did buy her a seat on the plane. Of course when we landed at BOS we had to take a shuttle bus to our rental car , which you guessed it, had no seat belts. Not much you can do in that situation.

 

[ilovemk76]

Until I came onto the Disboards, I had never heard of anyone using a car seat on a plane. I have honestly never ever seen this.

I fly often and I have seen it many times.

I prefer the kids are in the car seat when I have to sit in the row in front of them, screaming baby in ear, or next to them, frigidity baby. Most people put the baby at the window.

 

[mommasita]

A special ordered football helmet for special snowflake!

You absolutely cannot shield your child from every single danger out there, including choosing to hold your baby on the plane. If the plane were crashing, regardless if the baby was in his/her carseat the chances of them surviving would be very small.

Living in fear isn't healthy. What does that teach your son?

You have one child? A baby?

Have you had a child in a contact sport?

My son played football for 12 years, and the CITY provides everything possible to avoid an injury they could prevent. That is try...... We as parents can buy the rest... Having said that, my son still had quite the list of injuries, and unless you know what that is like firsthand, and spending nights and more in the ER with cat scans and the like, then I don't honestly see how you can comment that way.

That isn't teaching our children fear IMHO. That is teaching protection..

 

[DisneyJamieCA]

I know this posted pages ago, but this stuck out to me. Most buses don't have seat belts. In CA most kids are in car seats or boosters until they are 8 yo. Are families really supposed to avoid taking the bus until then? Personally, if I was on that bus I would have thought you were being unsafe by using the bungee cords. We flew with DD1 when she was 3 months old and yes, we did buy her a seat on the plane. Of course when we landed at BOS we had to take a shuttle bus to our rental car , which you guessed it, had no seat belts. Not much you can do in that situation.

Glad to know I'm not the only who saw how unsafe that is! In the event of accident, those bungee cords aren't going to hold to car seat to the bus seat and then you've got a projectile child & seat, which could seriously harm the child.

I know on DLE (Disneyland Resort Express) - which is a Greyhound bus, they won't let you use a car seat at all because there is no safe way to attach it! They do have children sit just sit on the seats. The same happened to us when we took a shuttle bus that size from the Spokane airport into Idaho. Whether buses should have seat belts is an entirely different conversation, but as they are now, they don't & there isn't a safe way to connect a car seat.

 

[LSmith]

oops.

 

[smitch425]

That was rude and unnecessary,

How so? I didn't call anyone names, like the poster I quoted did. There was no reason to speak that way about someone's child, and I have no problem telling someone that it isn't right. YMMV.

 

[kidshop]

Glad to know I'm not the only who saw how unsafe that is! In the event of accident, those bungee cords aren't going to hold to car seat to the bus seat and then you've got a projectile child & seat, which could seriously harm the child.

I know on DLE (Disneyland Resort Express) - which is a Greyhound bus, they won't let you use a car seat at all because there is no safe way to attach it! They do have children sit just sit on the seats. The same happened to us when we took a shuttle bus that size from the Spokane airport into Idaho. Whether buses should have seat belts is an entirely different conversation, but as they are now, they don't & there isn't a safe way to connect a car seat.

I thought I made it quite clear I had never been on a bus before and I was let on with a huge car seat. I did what I had to do to secure it. I am not advocating for it LOL. I would advocate for seat belts on buses though.


And I never did ride on a bus again!

 

[DisneyJamieCA]

I thought I made it quite clear I had never been on a bus before and I was let on with a huge car seat. I did what I had to do to secure it. I am not advocating for it LOL. I would advocate for seat belts on buses though. And I never did ride on a bus again!

I understand that. It was more about the people who were saying you did what was safest in the situation. Which is not the case. I understand you did what you thought was right at the time, and that you were exhausted - I just don't want people mistakingly thinking it was a safe alternative. As backwards as it seems, your child would have been safer sitting on seat itself, in this situation. And I agree, I wish buses had seat belts. I know evacuation is always a concern, but if they're putting them in school buses now, why not these types of buses?

 

[goofy4tink]

If you want to hold your baby in your lap, that's fine. You're allowed to if you choose to buy your baby a seat and put your carseat in that seat? Go for it. You're allowed to. It's up to each family to decide what works for them. Comparing this to playing football or baseball just doesn't cut it. It's not the same thing. My dd started flying at the age of three. And of course she had a seat. But to be honest? I can't imagine holding her on my lap for 3+ hrs. Way too uncomfortable. If I needed to get up, she would have been disturbed. But again, that's my choice.
I do have to think though, that airlines figure that families will stop flying as much if they have to pay for their babies. It's a money saver to have a lap baby! My question.....what is the difference between a 4 y/o and an almost 3 y/o? Not much. It has to be a financial consideration on the part of the airlines.

 

[kidshop]

I understand that. It was more about the people who were saying you did what was safest in the situation. Which is not the case. I understand you did what you thought was right at the time, and that you were exhausted - I just don't want people mistakingly thinking it was a safe alternative. As backwards as it seems, your child would have been safer sitting on seat itself, in this situation. And I agree, I wish buses had seat belts. I know evacuation is always a concern, but if they're putting them in school buses now, why not these types of buses?

ETA. I remembered why we had bungi cords on this trip. The child in the story is almost 15, so I was a little fuzzy. I'm kinda afraid to say now but it was it strap his car seat on a small luggage cart to get through the airport since we didn't bring a stroller. It worked pretty good too!

 

[Colleen27]

Something I think needs to be considered in this discussion is the shrinking size of airplane seats. When I last had a lap-baby aged child, her carseat was 3" too wide for the seat and many airlines have moved to a slimmer seat since then (2009). Sure, it was FAA approved but you can't wedge a 21" wide carseat into a 17" seat! Carseats are getting bigger/wider to offer more protection and more features while airplane seats are getting smaller to cram more passengers on the plane. So is it really going to yield a safety improvement to require seats for infants/toddlers if many of those children are only restrained by a belt that isn't designed for someone so small? Because most families don't fly often enough that they'll drop a couple hundred bucks on a separate carseat that is suitable for airplane use.

Personally I find this, and all the many other crusades out there aimed at eliminating one-in-a-million risks, to be entirely absurd. Only one of my kids flew before her second birthday, and yes, she was a lap baby. Why? Cost was only one factor. The fact that we didn't have a plane-sized carseat was another. And the fact that she was still nursing and would therefore be in my lap for at least part of the 2 hour flight was yet another. There are a million risks that we face every day and this just isn't a significant enough danger to warrant attention or action in my opinion. Lap baby or in a carseat, either way the child is in much, much more danger just getting to the airport than on the flight itself.

 

[Colleen27]

If someone thinks like this, people also shouldn't be able to bring anything else on a flight either because if a BABY is going to become a projectile item out of parents arms, there will be MANY other items flying around the airplane. Even the overhead bins have been known to get knocked open and drop suitcases on people, which will most likely cause more injury to you than a projectile baby.

I agree. The one and only diagnosed concussion I have had in my life was due to a book. It was in the back seat of my car and I was rear ended at about 25mph. Somehow the impact send that book into the back of my head, hard enough to break the skin and cause a concussion. If we're going to talk about lap babies as a hazard to other passengers, we should also be talking about laptops, tablets, hardcover books, etc.

 

[Colleen27]

My position is if the ONLY reason you flight with a lap baby is to save money - then that comes across as mercenary. When parents admit that it sounds horrible.

I don't think it sounds mercenary at all. As someone else pointed out, not every flight is a family vacation to Disney World - families fly for many reasons and sometimes cost is a big factor. And if we're honest with ourselves, cost influences a lot of safety decisions - there are certainly safer cars on the market than my 8yo Chevy minivan, but is it really mercenary or horrible that I'm not willing to take out a big car loan to have that safer vehicle? I know that's an extreme, but the same principle applies to all sorts of other purchases as well. Time and money are, for most of us, limited resources and that drives a lot of decisions. The only reason this one stands out is because flying is assumed to be a luxury.