Booster Seats & High Chairs

There comes a point where the high chair starts to feel like it's holding your toddler apart from everyone else. A high chair booster seat brings them up to the family table on a normal dining chair, which is usually what they've been asking for by climbing out of the other one.

Knowing When Your Toddler Is Ready

Most families make the move somewhere between one and two, though there's no schedule and no need to rush it. The signs are usually obvious enough: sitting steadily without support, showing real interest in what's on everyone else's plate, and starting to treat the high chair as something to escape from. 

Floor seats come earlier, propping a younger baby upright for supervised play or first tastes. Strap-on boosters come next, lifting a toddler onto a dining chair. Table-mounted seats clamp straight to the tabletop, which suits a small kitchen or a café. Plenty of families own two, one that lives at home and one that goes in the car.

Checking It Suits Your Chairs and Table

A booster seat for dining chair use needs a chair with a flat seat and a solid back, and the straps have to reach around both. Curved or upholstered chairs can be trickier, so measure your seat depth before ordering. 

Table-mounted seats need a solid tabletop of the right thickness with nothing underneath the edge blocking the clamp, which rules out most tables with an apron or a thick lip, and they aren't suited to glass or single-pedestal tables. Whichever type you choose, look for a harness rather than a lap strap alone, non-slip contact points, and a seat you can wipe out rather than pick crumbs from. A removable tray helps for the stage before they're eating off the table itself.

The Case for Something That Travels

A portable booster chair earns its keep the first time you visit family and there's nowhere safe to put your toddler. Grandparents get one to keep at their place, which saves carting it back and forth, and holiday houses almost never have anything suitable. 

A folding or strap-on seat goes in the boot, weighs very little, and turns any kitchen chair into somewhere your child can eat. If you're heading out for a meal, having your own seat means you're not relying on the café having a spare high chair, or on it being clean when it arrives. It's one of the more genuinely useful things to have in the car.

The Best Booster Seat Brands in Australia

Phil & Teds makes the table-mounted seat that plenty of Australian families take everywhere, folding flat enough to carry in a bag.Mamas & Papas covers the earlier stages with floor seats and convertible boosters that grow through several configurations and come with activity trays. 

BabyBjorn brings its usual restraint, with a simple strap-on booster in wipe-clean plastic.IZIMINI offers lightweight baby chairs across a broad run of prints. These are just some of the brands we carry.

Everything Else at the Table

Getting your toddler to the table is the first half. Keeping the meal off the floor and the clothes is the other, and that's where the rest of the toddler feeding range comes in. Worth a look: 

• High Chairs
• High Chair Accessories
• Feeding Bibs
• Tableware
• Drink Bottles & Cups
• Food Storage & Lunchboxes
• Feeding Bundles

Come and try the seats on a chair atAlexandria orMiranda, or order online and we'll send it out to you.