Car seat question for you?

It is not illegal to let the 7 year old sit in the front seat, however, it is extremely dangerous.

There are very narrow car seats out there that will let the 7 year old fit in the back. Since he or she is 7, I would assume that she or she is using a booster seat. There is a booster seat called the bubblebum booster and is extremely narrow. I would recommend buying it so the 7 year old can sit in the back in the middle seat. The problem is booster seats can only be used with a 3 point seat belt and some vehicles in the center seating postion only have a 2 point belt.

His other 2 siblings could be using narrow car seats. The Diono Radian RXT and R120 are very narrow converible car seats. Despite being narrow side to side, they have a dramatic angle front to back. This can be solved with the $10 angle adjuster sold by Diono to fix angles. Older children can be more upright- as upright as 30 degrees from vertical. The 45 degree rules only applies to babies without head control. Anyhow, the Radian RXT and R120 can be used rearfacing up to 45 lbs, forward facing with the harness up to 80 lbs and as a booster seat up to 120 lbs and has a top slot of about 17.5 inches. The top slot height is important because when forward facing, the harness straps should be at or slightly ABOVE the shoulders- when rearfacing, the straps should be at or slightly BELOW the shoulders.

The reason why children should remain in the back seat is because they have different bone development than an adult. It doesn't matter how big the 7 year old is or how tall he is. Even if he was 5 feet tall, he would have to sit in the back seat, because he cannot withstand the force of an airbag. This is why children should remain in the back seat until they are TEENAGERS. For example, a child can sit in the front seat when they are thirTEEN. Even if there wasn't an airbag, the front seat is known as the death seat because this is a main point of impact.

Car accidents are the leading cause of injury, acquired disability, and death for children under 12 years of age.

If there is no way that you will get these seats, the only safest measure is to put the front seat as far back as possible and install the car seat as you normally would.