Have just moved to a new house with narrow stairs with just a tiny landing at the top. My plan was to teach nearly four year old DS to use stairs safely, but babygate off at night with a tall gate once he’s in bed to be safe (he never gets up in the night and wanders, but does come into me in the morning which would mean crossing the landing, and I fear one sleepy misstep and he could tumble…and obviously he may decide at any time to start midnight wanders!).
However, now I’ve moved in and looked at getting a stairgate, it seems it’s impossible to get anything that fits across top of stairs due to the odd layout, with a gap between edge of top step and wall (yellow line on stairs pic) plus bannister in the way. Have even spoken with and sent pics to ‘safetots’ and they were unable to recommend anything.
So my options are gating the space just before the stairs (see pic), but worry that if DS ever got it into his head to climb over, if he actually managed he could drop straight down the stairs on other side. Or, gating off his bedroom at night – don’t like the idea of this, and still possible he might climb over but at least then it’s not directly in front of stairs.
Any ideas on what the best option is here? Or any ingenious ways to gate off the space safely? Also, how easy might it be for a four year old to open a gate? We’ve come from a flat and I’ve never used gates before so am a novice