If there’s one thing I hate about traveling with my preschooler in the car, it has to be…

No, not the noise that you wish she’d stop making.

Not the “are we there yet?” when we’re in the middle of nowhere.

Not the “I have to pee!” when there’s no bathroom for at least another hour.

It’s the seatbelt.

My daughter’s booster seat is great, it really is. But my car’s seatbelt seems to have a mind of its own. (Personally I think it’s cursed.)

Sometimes she leans forward and it locks. “MOM! It’s pulling on me again!!” Sometimes she climbs in, I go to strap her into her seat, and the seat belt won’t play out. I try to jerk a few times before realizing it’s stuck and I have to start all over.

Why wouldn’t it play out in the first place? It was caught in the booster seat. It took me nearly five minutes of muttering and fiddling to figure that out.

Then there’s the frustration of getting the seatbelt to be tight enough around my child’s lap. Cars just weren’t built to recognize that, “Hey, this is a kid, here. We need to adjust to that booster seat!” SUVs that had built-in child seats always sounded so appealing to me, if only because I assumed that the manufacturers paid extra attention to making sure children had a safe, comfortable ride in the custom-designed seats.

(Note: I’m not informed whether these built-in child seats actually are custom-designed and safer than regular booster seats. I’m just assuming they are and could be wrong.)

I’m patient and conscientious about making sure my daughter is well strapped in - I know many, many parents who are just too busy or rushing around too much and they don’t pay as much attention as I do. They put their kids at risk every day, thinking they won’t have an accident because those parents are safe drivers.

Well, you don’t really plan to have accidents. That’s why they’re called “accidents” and not “intentional”.

So if you’re like me, if you want to make sure that your child has a safe ride in the car in her booster seat, take two extra minutes to make sure she’s strapped in properly. You may also want to consider a booster seat safety device like the Seat Snug to have some extra peace of mind.

Because on those long drives, we parents need all the peace we can get!