At what age did you let your child use the stairs on their own?

[laadedaa]

Just for context, my child is 3 years and 2 months old. We still have baby gates on our town house, so 4 gates in total.
At the moment, we NEVER let him use the stairs alone. If walking upstairs, I always walk behind him or hold his hand and walk alongside him. If he's walking downstairs I will go in front and walk backwards so I can watch him, or hold his hand and walk beside him. When out and about I will always hold his hand.

I'm just wondering at what age I should be able to trust him to do it alone and let him have free range of the house?

He does have a slight visual impairment affecting depth perception.

DS was safe unsupervised from when he was 2, but this was because he ran up on all fours like a monkey, and bumped down on his bottom. I probably should have worked on this instead of leaving him to it, because he still prefers to run up on all fours (at nearly 4). Our stairs are very steep, in fairness.

We never had a stair gate for DC2 and he pottered about himself without a bother. It totally depends on each individual child

DS was up the stairs at 7 months - which was helpful as he has a twin who needed to be carried as not then crawling - meant I could take stuff upstairs

He then learnt to bump down on his front at 12 months - didn't walk til later

I'm wondering if you are over helping your son and what would happen if you left him to it? Given lots of time and not in a rush?

It could build his confidence

My DS is 25 months. He is obsessed by stairs, always goes straight for them when we visit a new house. He has really good balance (short arse with low centre of gravity ) and is very stable walking up and down stairs. He stands upright holding on to the spindles of the bannister or just putting his hand on the wall. However he gets too confident and tries to run or jump so I don’t let him on the stairs by himself. I follow three or 4 steps behind when going up and walk down backwards in front of him when going down.

Also, our stairs are steep, long and uncarpeted so my approach to risk is that there may be a small risk of him falling but if he does fall he’ll probably hurt himself quite badly. We have two half landings of three stairs and he goes up and down them unsupervised all the time because I don’t think he could do himself too much damage on those if he did fall.

So in summary it depends on the child and the stairs and you probably need to trust your own instinct.