This Dad’s Hilarious Car Seat Installation Video Is All Of Us
Hilarious video parodies the struggle of installing car seats correctly
Car seat installation is a major source of panic for most parents, especially when you’re new to this whole “having a baby” gig and it seems like the instruction manual is about 39,000 pages long. New Zealand dad Jordan Watson is no stranger to car seat confusion, and that’s why he just made a hilarious video about the installation process that’s got parents everywhere cry-laughing in solidarity.
Watson runs the popular Facebook page How To Dad and recently shared a parody video called “How To Install A Car Seat.” In the video, he says parents are divided into two camps: those who install car seats with ease (do those people actually exist?), and those of us who, well, don’t.
To demonstrate the first type, he effortlessly installs a car seat in a few seconds flat. For the second, he does a stand-up job of showing how very real the struggle can be. He wrestles with the seat, starts sawing and banging on it with a hammer, and then eventually just decides to strap the car seat to his torso like a baby carrier. “It’s pretty good with her just to walk anyway, so, uh, I think we’ll just go for a walk,” he says, as he saunters offscreen with the car seat tied around his hips with heavy ropes.
Since the video went up, it’s been shared over 3,000 times, because we’ve all been there, right? For new parents — and even some of us seasoned pros — car seats are a mess of straps, latches, buckles, snaps, and harnesses. It seems like car seat technology changes every other week, and it can be seriously impossible to keep up. It’s hard to ask for help, because it feels like we should be able to figure this out, but as this dad’s funny video shows, it’s not at all uncommon if your car seat installation process looks like a little bit of a shit show.
A 2015 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that, while 90 percent of parents think their car seats are installed correctly, only about half of them actually are. During Child Passenger Safety Week last fall, Buckle Up For Life put out its own funny video about car seat installation, intended to serve as a PSA about making sure seats are installed correctly.
If there’s one thing all these funny videos should tell us, it’s that installing car seats can be hard as hell, and we shouldn’t feel silly for struggling or asking for help. If you’re doing it wrong, you’re definitely not alone. Get your work checked out by a certified car seat safety technician, or just tie it around your waist like the world’s heaviest Ergo — either way, don’t drive until you know you’ve got it right.
