Hi Mama! I feel for you! We went through this with our daughter between age 2 and 2.5. I'd say about 70% it was a huge battle getting her into the car seat. I even posted here about it. I read and tried a lot of great ideas, but NOTHING helped. We ended up having to force her hips down into the seat and very forcefully buckle her in on a few occassions. She would scream like we were physically abusing her, which in a sense, from her standpoint we were. It was so aweful!! We felt aweful, she felt aweful, it was just the worst.
My husband and I are both very much against physical punishment and force so this felt so wrong to us, but we felt like we had no alternative when we had to get somewhere or leave to go home from somewhere. I eventually just could not do that to my daughter one more time!
Finally, one day on a whim, I tried a different tactic that I hadn't before. This time, after putting her in the seat, but having her refuse to be buckled in by standing, turning around, climbing out. or what-have-you, I just closed the door and quickly got into the driver seat and closed the door. At this point she was climbing around the front seat and grabbing at things. (Luckily she doesn't know how to open the doors from the inside yet.) I just quietly sat there looking out the window. After a few minutes she noticed that I wasn't talking and said something about it and I said something like "I am patiently waiting for you to get into you car seat so we can go," or "When you are buckled in you car seat we can go." Then I just continued to wait in silence and not interact with her. I didn't completely ignore her but I made it so utterly boring for her that she eventually crawled in the carseat and said "I'm ready," or something like that. No force!! Yay! Granted I may have waited like ten minutes which felt like a really long time.
Since then we always use that tactic when we have carseat battles, which we still do occassionally, but not nearly as often (she is 3 now). It works every time, although we have had to wait in a parking lot for 15 minutes sometimes before she complies. We just very quietly wait it out until she is ready. It seems really inconvenient to just sit there when you have to be somewhere else, but for me it totally beats having to physically force her in.
So, it may not work for you or you might not want to do the waiting game, especially if you have more than one child, but it is another tactic to try if you are at your wits end.
Good luck!
Suggestions anyone?
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