This weekend I took the St. John’s Ambulance course and got certified as a Child Restraint Technician!!!
I had been very diligent about my girls’ carseats and how they were installed and was pretty confident in my ablilities to install a seat before I took the course. But, boy, did I learn a lot!!!
Now when you try to shake my carseats at the belt path, the whole car shakes!! The carseat doesn’t move an inch!!
We did a car seat clinic yesterday and of the 10 seats that came:
- 1 was forward facing with pool noodles underneath and wiggled all over the place
- 2 were infant seats at the wrong angle, wiggled all over the place and touched the front passenger seat
- 1 was rear facing with the forward facing foot down- 1 infant in an infant seat had the harness so loose that the baby would have slipped right out and the chest clip was at it’s stomach and the base was really really loose
- 1 forward facing seat was too big for the vechicle and we advised the parent to get a new seat (even the senior tech/instructor couldn’t get it installed properly
- 1 was a forward facing seat that was loose and the tether wasn’t tight enough- there were a few others
but only 1 infant seat was actually insalled propertly!!
I’m so happy that I now know how to do it properly and have the skills to not only install seats but teach the parents how to do it, and why it’s done the way it is.
Any one want some help???
