Because she is AWESOME and silly! We want to keep her safe!

We have had some debate in our live as to where Catie should be sitting now that she is  12 in the car. She is legally old enough to sit in the front seat...she also met the height and weight requirements years ago.   She won't however be riding in the front seat of any vehicle until she is 16 or is in drivers ed and can be driving the car herself.   I am not sure she even ready to think about that yet.
She is still have some PTSD from the car accident.  I didn't even know you could have PTSD from a car accident until we experienced it.  She still fights back tears and panic when I turn too quickly or stop too quickly.  Even Nathan and I have had the same reaction to each other driving, at different times. I seem to not be able to go past the crash site without crying almost hysterically.  We tend not to drive past there since the kids don't like to see mom cry like that.   Nathan almost feels a sense of calm as he drives past there...since he feels like we met angels that day.   I feel like our would almost stopped that day and it flipped it's poles or something.  Back to Catie though....the first time I heard anything about the death seat was the day after the car accident.  Someone said to me "its amazing you walked away from that you know you were sitting in the death seat and all you have is that awesome bruise?"   I cringed and thought my daughter sits in that seat on the way home from school everyday.   What have I been doing.  I started looking into it.   This is what I found first... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2564455/ Of my gosh...ok Catie...no more front seat for you...Nathan agreed...right away she was pissed off...but within minutes she calmed down and was fine and never said another word about it.  In fact she got really possessive about her seat in the back seat of the car.  She would scream at her brother and throw a fit and temper tantrum ( at age 11) because he wanted to sit there. We finally asked what was going on and she said she felt like she needed to sit in the same place she was sitting in when we had the car accident because we all lived.  Ok...whatever works kid!   Needless to say we have called the doctor...and have put in the call for counseling.   We have to wait for a referral.  It takes months.   She has made comments about not liking having to sit in the back now but she isn't really griping she is just stating that she would rather it have more things to do...more buttons to push...she would rather he brother wasn't right beside her...she just wants to be a grown up.  I think I will take the extra few years and keep her safe in the back.  The last link is the Institute For Highway Safety...It has some startling information...please just take a look at it...the one the thing I was surprised about was the shear number of people killed in auto accidents in 2013.   65% of passengers were killed in auto accidents.  Please buckle up...it only takes a second and it really truly does safe lives.  We are proof!

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/passenger-vehicles