Oh jesus, my 2.7year old DS has somehow learnt how to scale every stair gate in the house...

[bohemianbint]

We have one at the bottom of our (very steep) stairs, one at the top and one in the doorway of DS1's room. Mainly because he is a loon and if we can't safely contain him he will climb anything.

Anyway, last night, he appeared at the top of the stairs despite (we thought) him being safely stuck downstairs. Then this morning, he woke up at 6am, chunnered to himself for 20 mins, and the next thing we know he's running into our room, shouting "I climbed out of the stairgate - I'm hungry want 3-4-5 weetabix."

Whilst I was half amused, half quite impressed I am now filled with dread; DS2 is poorly and not sleeping well the last couple of nights. If we now have to deal with DS1 announcing himself every 4 minutes I might crack up.

Is it fairly common for toddlers to lose respect for stairgates at this age? What do you do if you rely on them to keep them safely contained?

My dd1 was like this - I actually took the stairgates at the top of the stairs down because if she climbed it and fell, she would have had further to fall.

I believe you can buy stairgates for dogs that are extra high- try Argos iirc.

That is a very good point belgo. Although I'm a bit worried that if I do that, and he goes walkabout in the dark at night expecting the stairgate to be there...

I can't believe he can do this. Will check out Argos, thanks for the tip! Was your DD alright, did she manage to avoid any accidents? DS is quite skilful but is also a bit wild and we've had 1 stair falling incident and a couple of near misses.

oh dd1 has had so many accidents I can't really remember anything specific. We've had a good few trips to A&E. Sorry that's not very reassuring.

ooood dear. Nothing too serious I hope?!

Well, he has gone down to bed now and all is quiet, so fingers crossed...

I think the important thing now is to teach him how to negotiate stairs safely...can you contain him in his room to keep him safe at night? ds is about the same age and will occupy himself with books etc for a bit at least if he doesn't have the option of finding company.....

so far no but I have quite a few grey hairs!

what about some sort of hook and eye on his bedroom door, so he can open the door, but not come out, and therefore not wander the house alone?

Put barbed wire around the top, at least he will get caught on it and stay in one place.

Ah, the joy of a climber, eh?

I think if we see how tonight goes and hope for the best. Worst case scenario I have an old hairband that ties his doorknob to the bathroom doorknob so he can open the door a bit but not get out. I don't much like doing it but if it stops him falling down the stairs/stealing any last small window of opportunity for us to get some sleep it may have to be done.

and he won't try it again AlastairSim!

well, he's only just learnt not to touch the grill the hard way.

my DS2 who will be 2 next week successfully negotiated getting out of his cot, and over the stair gate at the top of the stairs, down the stairs and into the living room about three weeks ago. i came out of the kitchen with my nighttime cup of coffee and there was the wee bugger sitting playing with his cars!
He is now, in a big boy bed (with a wee guardrail) and the stair gate has been relegated to blocking his entry to my kitchen. He has only come out of his bed once in the 3 weeks and only came into my bedroom to give me a cuddle and then went back to sleep - think the wee sausage was just checking i was still there.

We took ours down at this stage - seemed safer to tumble down the stairs - although they didn't - just went on their bottoms or walked down. Wondered what the hell I'd had the gates there for when I saw them.

we never use ours anymore (DS3.5 and DS2 22 months)

much safer imo, just teach them to bumop on their bums or slide on their tummys.

my friends dd broker her leg tripping over the stairgate when she was 2.5