It is well known that children, that is children such as in the age from when they may sit by themselves (about 6-7 month) until they master sitting safely in a children's chair without falling out (about 2 years), need safety equipment hindering them from falling out of a children's chair.
Blockings are often used, such as bows or crossbars, possibly combined with a vertical strap or bar in children's chairs for this objective. Possibly, the entire seat of the chair may be shape moulded as a seat with integrated cross bow and crotch bar. The disadvantage with shape moulded chairs is that the seat may not be adjusted in relation to the size and age of the child. Often, such physical blocks in the seat are combined with a harness in order to secure the child from climbing out of the chair. However, a physical block may be used alone when the child is so small that it is unable to climb out, or to provide extra physical support that a harness may not provide alone.
From SE 451 530 a safety bow is known for a children's seat to be mounted onto a conventional chair by straps. The safety bow has two horizontal ends for connecting onto corresponding horizontal top surfaces on side pieces or the seat. The side pieces are hollow with holes in the top surface for entering screws from the underside and into receiving holes on the underside of the bows ends. The bow also comprises a centre piece with a peg in the bottom end for fitting into a hole in the children's seat.
Further, from EP 1 388 811 a limiting ring is known for a children's seat to be mounted onto a conventional chair. The limiting ring has two horizontal ends, for being associated with the back of the seat, and a separate supporting centre rod, with a lower threaded end for screwing into a threaded hole in the children' seat and a top end to be attached to the limiting ring by a cap.
In later years, a development has evolved in the direction of more countries and regions having their own safety measures for equipment to be used by children, such as in children's chairs. This must be taken into account in the development of new children's chairs, but it may be difficult to adapt chairs which have been produced in a long period before such safety provisions were put into force. It is especially difficult to perform such adoptions on chairs that have already been sold for many years, without making physical interventions in the chairs. There are thousands of chairs around in homes.
This is for example the case with the Tripp Trapp® children's chair which was developed as early as in 1972 and patented in 1976 and which still is a very popular children's chair in many countries.
The chair is designed to be adjusted in coherence with the body size of the child and therefore has a seat plate and a foot plate which may be moved to different height positions in that they glide in tracks in the side pieces and are locked by tightening the distance between the side pieces. The sitting plate may further be adjusted in the depth position in that a plate is pushed in relation to the seat back, and thereby providing the child using the chair a correct seat length under the thighs.
It has proven difficult to adapt existing seats to new effective demands, especially in order to keep the above mentioned original functions of the chair. In order to achieve this, the attachment of a safety bow for example should be able to follow the height and depth position of the seat.
In addition to fastening a safety bow to such chairs, it may also be mentioned that it could be desirable to mount a children's harness which may be used simultaneously with the safety bow.
It is a further objective to provide a fastening means for such additional equipment as mentioned above so that the owners of older chairs also may upgrade their chairs. It is also an objective to avoid physical interventions, such as making holes in any of the parts or inserting screws that leave spoiling marks in the chair which will be visible when there no longer is any use for the children's harness or the safety bow. Such interventions may further result in the risk of the user making adaptations on the wrong manner, so that the safety is not kept intact. It is therefore an objective with the invention to make the fastening of the additional equipment as intuitive and simple as possible, upholding safety at the same time, preferably without the use of tools.
A safety bow should further be simple in design and reasonable to produce, taken into account that the safety bow is only used for a limited period of time, compared to the life of the chair.