Advice needed please. We're moving to a new house tomorrow, which is completely open-plan downstairs - living/dining/kitchen.
DS is 2Y5M, sleeps in a 'big bed' and his bedroom is on the first floor - next to ours - with an easily openable door. Up another floor is the bathroom. We can't fit stairgates because the bannisters/newel posts just won't allow it (but also they'd be no good, since he now climbs over stairgates!).
So, I've decided that we're going to have to lock him into his room at night and have a baby monitor on. In your opinions is this right? DP is very uneasy about closing him into his room, but I just can't let him have unmonitored access to the kitchen/bathroom while I'm perhaps asleep - or during the early evening maybe out in the garden.
I was thinking of a bolt, so that the door didn't tantalizingly open just a bit for him, but my nursery manager told me a horrific story of two children at a previous nursery to hers who had died in a housefire, because their bedroom room was bolted, and with the heat the bolt expanded and couldn't be opened. How awful for them and their families - hearing that story made me shiver, so I've ruled out the bolt.
I then thought about a plastic drawer catch, but a colleague at work has suggested a plastic slip bolt (like a big plastic hook and eye?).
What do others think/do about this?