Do I need to tether my Britax Marathon RF?

[gabesmom]

I have a minivan with captain seats in the 2nd row. The only place for me to tether the seat is on the back of the seat that the car seat is in. Therefore, the tether strap would go over my son's head at a level that I feel is low enough that he would be trying to play with it. It just honestly doesn't look all that safe to me. Am I actually doing more harm than good by not tethering the seat rearfacing?

[nfowife]

You don't have to tether. A lot of us here with minivans tether to under the seat in front of the carseat, or straight down to the bars on the floor of the car. Or if you feel okay with this (and many of us do) you could run the tether to the tether hook on the same seat by running the strap underneath the seat instead of over it.

[Joolsplus2]

That's 'australian' tethering, and what you wan to do is 'swedish' tethering... lemme find a page on that to show you how... (clicking noise while I search around.....whew...that took a lot of searching, but I got it!....)

http://www.childrestraintsafety.com/swedish-tethering.html

Give that a look-see and ask questions if you need to after you read it. :)
Julie CPS Tech and mom to 3 in seats
http://www.cpsafety.com/articles/RFAlbum/SarahMA.aspx

[DrSally]

THanks Jools, we're just going to buy our minivan--we choose the Honda Oddessy--this weekend, and DS is still rearfacing, so this well be helpful for tethering the marathon.

[gabesmom]

Thank you all so much! It never dawned on me to tether it UNDER the seat. I am going to do that.