To think my Dad was being totally reckless when he took DS upstairs in our local department store via the....

[DollyDaisy]

escalator? DS is 8 months old and was in his pram at the time!

I was furious as thought Dad was following me to the store's lift. But apparently it was quicker to take the direct route and he just wedged the bugaboo onto the escalator and up they went.

Mum was horrified too.....but the DH couldn't see the problem either. Or are all men in my family just totally clueless?

scary even not sozzled iv opened the xmas gin so im pretty sozzled

Phew was confused there and a bit behind, thought you were saying throw the toeless children down the escalator or even their toes!

that would be wrong

Do it going up quite often but never coming down!!

[Grin] at festi. Now that's more like it!

Ah, MN, I love you so. Sometimes, it seems like a hive mind. Then, you realise that totally different people, with totally different opinions, are popping up on other threads! To return to the check-out analogy, for example.

If I posted in the persona of a middle-aged man (or woman) complaining that I'd been asked to move to the correct check-out, after putting 15 tins of beans instead of 9 on a conveyor belt, I'd be ruddy slaughtered. Even if it would have saved me time to use the shorter queue.

But a middle-aged man taking someone else's baby onto a department store's conveyor belt, which is only meant for human foot-passengers, gets a much greater level of sympathy! Even though almost all have agreed there is some level of risk. (Which there surely isn't if you try and sneak into the shorter queue at Tesco.)

MN is awesome. It really is.

And now I must snigger off to sleep.

i certainly know that when dd was two she was arsing about as we approached the end of the escalator (nice spot to start a tantrum, obv) she kind of fell over and despite the fact that i was holding her hand and yanked her back up she had substantial claw marks from the teeth of the steps on her back and bottom. looked like wolverine had had a go, to be honest.

it certainly taught her to treat them with more respect, which was no bad thing, but it doesn't really suggest that there is much can be done to prevent accidents by the designers of these things.

i think that whymeworry's characterisation of the two opposing sides here is quite wrong. seems to me the vocal pro-pushchair crowd has been sneery and dismissive while the antis have been surprised that anyone would consider it.

the plural of anecdote is not data, certainly, but if so many MNers tell me something i didn't know before (that if you work near escalators, you are less likely to take this risk because you have seen accidents), then i for one trust them and would change my behaviour accordingly.

seems to me to be a voice of reason right there!

I always panic on esculaters and avoid them whenever I can. My trousers and jeans always hang over my shoes (Imust be a short arse) and I'm shit scared of them catching and pulling me through so I kind of stare at the floor all the time shifting my weight from one foot to another in case one leg gets stuck. Sounds bonkers I know but there you go. If I have to take my dd(6) on one I always do a count down thing "123 step on -hold my hand - keep in the middle-blah blah - 321 step off" I always walk and drag my case at airports too, its often quicker than herding onto the travel strip things with the the other sheep.

Really pisses me off when people try to overtake on them and push dd out of the way. Any way DP used to do the pram on the esculater thing but I could never manage it, too tricky for me, after reading this thread Im glad my buggy pushing days are gone.

I do it on the tube all the time, have done for years. Anyone living in London really has no option, using the tube at least sometimes is basically unavoidable. What's the harm?

The statistics may be small but if it's your child that is involved, it's 100% for you. Cold comfort to you if your "oh I'm so hard and London and blase" attitude leads to your child losing a finger.
I can understand why people would do it when there is no option but to do it when there is a lift available is ridiculous. And to all the underground users who have to use the escalator, why not use a sling/carrier ? We spent the day in London last week with a pushchair and were using a lot of underground stations - the vast majority of which have a lift. Yes you have to walk further to get the lift but imo laziness is no reason to put your child at risk.

We have no safety stuff at home, no stair gates on our 3 storey house and we are pretty laissez faire about "risk management" but if two options are available I cannot understand why you would not take the safer one, even if it were more inconvenient.

"We have no safety stuff at home, no stair gates on our 3 storey house and we are pretty laissez faire about "risk management" but if two options are available I cannot understand why you would not take the safer one, even if it were more inconvenient."

But you've taken the less safe but more convenient option of having no safety stuff at home. How does that fit with your argument? If your child falls down the stairs and breaks something then your laissez fair attitude towards risk management will be cold comfort...

Who says gates are more safe than teaching children to use the stairs safely? Thats just your perspective.

If you have the option to walk for an hour or drive for 10 mins, which do you do? Because one is more convenient and one is safer. I be I know which you choose....

Falls down stairs are one of the biggest causes of serious injury amongst babies and toddlers, IIRC. Doesn't matter how well you teach a toddler to climb the stairs, they can fall/get distracted (and you know how easily a toddler gets distracted) or trip while near the top of the stairs. Each to their own but don't imagine that teaching your child to use the stairs safely will prevent all accidents.

Mind you, I say that as the wife of a dimwit who, when we moved house, found some rat poison under the fridge, didn't bother to tell me, and moved it into a base unit. Tucked at the back, behind big packages, so I couldn't see it and had no idea it was there. Until I was washing up while ds played behind me, taking the pots and pans out of the cupboard... turned round to see him with blue grains of rat poison in his mouth. That was a scary moment! (Panic call to NHS Direct and the local poisons unit established that he was probably OK and certainly not poisoned enough to require stomach pumping, thank Christ. But dh was in Very Big Trouble.)

I don't take dd2's buggy on the escalators, since making a bit of a hash of things with dd1 once. I sort of got a bit of the buggy stuck at the top, and had had to keep stepping downwards whilst I jiggled it free. there was no-one else around, but if there had been people behind me there would have been an almighty pile-up.

I am however prepared to accept this was a freak incident caused my by own considerable mal-coordination, rather than a likely hazard.

and on the underground, when we lived in london, i used to pick up the whole buggy and walk it (not bump it) up the stairs between the two escalators. my bingo wings arms have never been more toned.

Well, with a crawling baby who can climb, i am fairly certain that gating off the bottom of the stars is far safer than saying "Now, Baby, this is how we climb stairs safely...'

Anyhow, the point of my comment was not really the relative safety or not of stair gates v training but the contradiction contained within that particular post.

DD is 2 and has never fallen down the stairs

None of mine fell down the stairs until DC5, aged about 20 months, fell twice on the same day, resulting in a trip to the hospital and x-rays. No damage done but got a gate next day.

I fell down the basement stairs one day carrying too much laundry and my back hasn't been the same since. There really is no age limit.

Only very rarely done it when there was no other choice. Hate it though, I'm paranoid. DH saw a baby fall from a buggy down the escalator once - thankfully somebody caught the baby but it was a scary thing to witness.

I was much more worried when I found out my dad took my exceedingly strong and wriggly (but not yet old enough to understand "stay still FFS") toddler on the escalator, holding him in his arms. This being fairly soon after DS had been in hospital because he'd wriggled free of DH and fallen to the floor and hit his head. I very rarely get assertive with my parents - I tend to just think oh well, at least they are babysitting now and again - but that was one time I said he must never do that again. DS was even at that time perfectly capable of walking on the stairs.

Failing to see the relevance of the brand of buggy though :o

I lived in London until my eldest was 4 and a half and I have never once taken a pushchair on an escalator. It's not a fact of life. When they were little enough they were in a sling to go on the tube and once they were old enough to be in the pushchair I have always, always, religiously, lifted them out, folded the chair and flung it over my shoulder. To me it's one of those things that you just don't do. Easiest was to only go to places on the Jubilee line.