In my first year of parenting, I was not car seat savvy at all. I didn’t read the manual. I looked forward to turning her forward facing at 12 months (another milestone!). I had things I focused on with her but I felt car seats were too technical for me, and not something I had an interest in.
Just shy of her one year birthday, I had to reinstall her car seat. I thought to myself, “what happens magically at one to make them suddenly safe to forward face?”. I used this rhetorical question to justify my choice to turn her around.
After I turned her, I started reading online about “extended rear facing (ERF)”. At first I thought this was just another over protective, helicopter parent thing. I held strong to this belief and didn’t want to think that I could have been wrong in turning #1 around. She was happy FF... she could see out the window and she could have more conversations about things we saw out the window! That has to count for something, right? But the online chatter got louder. I tried to dig my heels in further. How unsafe can FF be? They wouldn’t allow it if it were!
Then one night when she was 15 months old, in a “weak” moment I watched a YouTube video about a boy named Joel that had been posted a few months prior (Aug 2009). I encourage you to watch it too.
https://youtu.be/kvyIv9QVRBE
Joel’s quick story recap, seeing how he needlessly suffered, seeing all the older rear facing kiddos, the crash tests, and the Avril Lavigne song all came together and ignited something in me.
After wiping my tears, I found the car seat manual and went into the garage and turned her seat around. I kept her RF until she was 2y9m old, at which point I turned her because #2 came along (I thought I couldn’t fit two seats RF in our vehicle).
In the time that elapsed from turning #1 around to having #2, I started researching car seat safety more and more. I started to quickly know more than my friends about car seats and they’d ask me for seat recommendations and information. It became a hobby, and I became more vocal about the importance of things like ERF, winter safety, and proper installation and harnessing. When #2 was born, I was determined to keep him as safe as possible in the car.
#2 was one of those babies that car seat people have trouble with... he was HUGE (he still is!). At 12 months he was 30 lbs. At 2 he was 40 lbs. I invested in two of the only seats that, at the time, would allow him to rear face past 40 lbs (Diono Radian RXTs) and I managed to keep him RF right until he was 3.
My passion for car seat safety continued to grow as #2 grew. Life got in the way of me becoming a CPST earlier, but finally in January 2016 I took the CPSAC technician course and became one.
I loved volunteering as a CPST! I would perform car seat checks for anyone who needed help. Car seat clinics were my favourite, and they continue to be now. No matter how much you know, at a clinic you’ll always learn more. I quickly realized, however, that there was a huge need in my community for child passenger safety education and installation help. I couldn’t sustain what I was doing as a volunteer, and the amount of time I was taking researching and meeting with people for free was wearing on me and my family.
The decision to start a business was a challenging one. Helping professions, especially female dominated ones, have long struggled with charging for services provided. After all, as techs we are helping prevent injury and death of CHILDREN. But I also realized that not having a price was... well, weird! People would see me for an hour or more, they’d see me sweat, sometimes struggle to get seats in. I’d answer all their questions, write out forms for them, be available for questions afterwards. They wanted to pay me. So tips became a thing, and I really hate tipping. I wish they’d pay people in service industries reasonable wages so no one would ever have to tip! And now that’s what I was doing. I wasn’t comfortable with this at all.
I had a decision to make: Start charging or stop doing private checks. After talking to other CPSTs who have installation businesses, as well as my entrepreneur husband who saw this same thing happen with computer technicians early on (they were initially expected to fix computers for free), I took the leap and bought the additional insurance to start charging for my work.
I’ve been busy ever since, and I am excited to see where this path takes me. I absolutely love being a CPST, and am grateful I have the support to help me get on my feet as I start to grow this baby business. I think it was the right decision. Oh, and so was this...
#3 came along right as all of the above was going on and she, like many third babies, kind of had to just fit in to the crazy that was our lives.
When #1 was 10, #2 was 7, and #3 was 2, I finally went ahead and registered my business which truly does feel like baby #4 (there will be no real baby #4 just in case you were wondering!!).
BuckleRite was a name that I spent many nights trying to decide on. It’s seriously difficult to come up with a business name. Also I recently googled the name (for the 2460358th time) and found this..
Looks pretty vintage so they likely won’t be out to get me.
I thought the irony of spelling “right” wrong was funny even though I don’t think anyone else will see the humor. I decided to drop the space, making it BuckleRite instead of Buckle Rite (because if you’re going to spell it wrong, you might as well just make it all wrong!). Rest assured, despite my business-name-grammar-laxity (see what I did there?), I follow car seat rules to a T!
And the logo... oh the logo. I am a pen and paper person so I took to drawing out many designs before coming up with the one I have. Daughter #1 helped me decide on the heart. I wanted a harness. And I chose blue because I like the colour and it seems to work well for Facebook and Twitter (and Google told me blue was the best for a logo).
So to end this now verging on novel length post, I will conclude with another pic of #3 because I only posted one (and as my third born sister says, “there are no pictures of me as a babyyyyy!!!!”)...
Thank you to my family, especially my 3 littles, for helping me get to where I’m at; to my colleagues and friends for pushing me to value myself and my work; and to Avril Lavigne.
“You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.” -Robin Williams
