If you think child safety seats are easy to install, it may be because you've never installed one, or, if you have, chances are you got it wrong. Studies show that more than 80 percent of child safety seats are improperly installed. Factor in different laws for different states and varying weights and ages for switching your child from a car seat to a booster seat, and you have a real car seat conundrum.

Brandy Brow, a mother of six from Brattleboro, Vt., remembers her own conundrum. When the state of Vermont passed a law requiring all children age 8 and under to ride in safety seats or booster seats, Brow wondered how she was going to get them all latched in correctly in her car.

"We have four children that need some form of car seat," Brow says. "Currently, that makes one infant seat, two convertible seats [standard car seat] and one booster seat. It's literally a knuckle-busting experience trying to reinstall them so they are snug like they are supposed to be for optimum safety. But their incompatibility with each other makes it difficult because their sides hit each other at awkward angles. And the seats don't fit side-by-side in certain cars – at least with doors properly latched!"

Convertible seats and toddler seats typically can go from 5 pounds to approximately 40 pounds or even up to 65 pounds. This depends on the brand of seat purchased. These seats can be rear facing and forward facing. There is currently no law regarding which way a child should face in a car seat. However, it is highly recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics that you keep a child rear facing in her car seat until she is at least 1 year old and weighs 20 pounds, though it is best to keep children facing backward as long as their car seat allows.

Most convertible car seats allow parents to rear face their child to 30 pounds. When a child is facing the rear of the vehicle, they are protected by the car seat. The car seat will take the brunt of the crash and not the child's neck and spine. Children can outgrow these seats height-wise, too. When a child is forward facing, once his shoulders are above the top harness slots, he is too tall for the seat.

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