When did you take your stair gates away ?

[ahnostairs]

I've just removed the bottom one because it was always becoming loose anyway and my almost two year old was always opening it and then playing with the gate - opening and closing it.
I am keeping the one at the top indefinitely.

But the bottom one being gone is so nice for us. But the boy keeps climbing up to the top of the stairs and I'm worried he'll fall.

When did you let your child go up and down the stairs alone ? He can go up fine, although I do prefer to still be behind him and I just don't think he's ready to go down on his own either.

My DD is 4 and we had removed the bottom gate around a similar age but she wasn't as interested in going upstairs alone.

Stress !!

We just removed the upstairs one- it was on the landing rather than the top of the stairs.
3 years old- had the understanding of we stay upstairs and go downstairs together.

he couldn’t open it but is brilliant on the stairs

They can be very dangerous. After a terrible accident involving them my dsis removed them and tbh I only used it on dd bedroom never on the stairs

Omg how do you people teach your 2 year olds to walk down (!) safely?!

We've got steep stairs (terraced house) which are carpeted so they are incredibly slippery. A few months ago I slipped and sprained my foot and hurt my coccyx.

I honestly have no idea how to teach my DS to go down these stairs. Our friends' 3yo was taught to go down on his belly but when they visited us, he just slid down like on a crazy slide, he was unable control how fast he was going.

Anyone has any tips?

They need to go down backwards.

I was in a house with tons of stairs - to the kitchen, to bedroom 1, to bedroom 2,3 and bathroom, and to bedroom 4. So gating everywhere would have been so annoying.

Stairgates can be incredibly dangerous. You shouldn’t put them at the top of the stairs. They need to be at least three feet away if you have them at all.

We live in a three storey Victorian townhouse with a loft conversion, so four flights of stairs. All three children were taught to go down on their bellies, or shuffle down in their bottoms once they got older. They were incredibly quick but never out of control.

It's entirely down to what the child is like really. We had a concertina one at the top of the stairs, so no floor bar to trip on. I kept it for ages as one of the kids was a night time wanderer. Never climbed it, so just peace of mind that he wouldn't fall in the dark.

Never had them, wide staircase and a very higgledy piggledy house, nothing on the same level, absolutely fine.

Top one was removed when dd was 2.

Bottom one still on but only because we have dogs who are not allowed upstairs.

Never used them. I brought a load and then they were recalled before we put them up.

DD was put in a playpen if we wanted to keep her in one place and by the time she could climb out of it she was practised crawling up and down stairs safely.

We have gates everywhere, and locks on every door, inside and out, but it's not really about the stairs. It's because my 3.5 year old can't be trusted not to mess about with anything and everything, so she is always confined to sections of the house if left briefly unsupervised. I find it interesting that apparently other people don't have to do this?!

We do also have a mobile baby so hoping he will be less impulsive/more sensible when he is older so we can finally remove them!

Now that you're done making absurd comparisons, you have time to teach your child how to go up and down the stairs.

It just takes one sleepy child on a middle of the night loo trip to trip over an over-long pyjama leg...

I always close the upstairs gate at night. I think the most dangerous stage isn't when they're tiny but when they're out of a cot, toilet-trained and have a reasonable degree of independence.

Says the person who doesn’t even have kids

I do have children and actually managed to raise them to adulthood without a single one falling to their death down the stairs.

He probably slid down like that because he is three and been doing it ages and it's more fun to go fast! DS went down backwards from 9 months but slowly, then learnt to walk down sometime between 18 months and two, holding on. Ours weren't steep, steep stairs may delay walking down.

I have a stair gate but I use it to separate the kitchen diner to keep my son safe. Put it up when we moved in when he was 2 and it’s still there now and he’s 9, but has sen. He’s more like a 5yo and it still really helps as his sense of danger isn’t where it should be.

Practice mainly, ours were both familiar with the stairs long before they could walk and they're not exactly athletic children (take after their parents!). Get them to either go down on their bum or backwards. They'll get it quickly, they're so used to learning at that age it's just another skill.

If people have two and three year old children who can't go down stairs, then how are they managing at the playground with steps and ladders and cargo nets?

I had 5 DC, and not one single stair gate.
Never had one stair related accident.

I always did wonder if the bar going across the bottom was a bit of a trip hazard, especially at the top of the stairs.

Son is 2.5 and we never used stair gates. He just learned how to go up and down by himself (as in, we stood in the right place to catch him but didn't actively teach him). He rarely showed much interest in going up on his own so I didn't have to watch him like a hawk. On the occasions he has gone up alone, he's always done it very cautiously.

He was never on his own upstairs so coming down wasn't a worry. Until recently he went up and down on his knees/bum. He just recently started spending time upstairs alone and coming down on his get about a month ago.

Glad it's not just me!
My daughter is 5 and we still have one at the top because of my dog. We generally only use it in the evening to stop him trying to climb into bed with her.

When I fell down the stairs for the umpteenth time and destroyed them.😂 We could do with having them again, to stop the elderly dog from getting upstairs.

I would never have a pressure mounted one right at the top of a flight of stairs. I agree that this may be more dangerous than having nothing at all.