Child safety in stairs and landing

[Samr85]

Not sure where to post this really but how do you keep your upstairs hall safe? Bit worried as my daughter is now crawling and the rails on our banisters go width ways so worried she may either try to crawl under the bottom one or once she finds her feet, use it as a ladder and go over the top? Ideas on how you keep yours safe would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

Eek, that does sound scary! If its your house, could you get a panel put over the top for now? Wouldn't cost too much I expect. If its rented, maybe contact the agent/landlord to discuss what you could do. I agree it definitely sounds like a hazard.

We have one stairgate at the top of the stairs, but there's only a small square of a landing so that does for rooms too. In our last house we had a big landing and ds fell down all the stairs at 11mo...oops. He had only just started crawling and I just didn't think he was interested in the stairs so I'd definitely get something sooner than later!

My parents had this at their house, they fitted panels to the bottom gap to block it to start with. The other way might be to get an extra long stair gate to block it off?

I agree with fitting panels to block it off. As an interim measure, could you put something in front of the open panel, like a suitcase or something she couldn't move out of the way, to make it safe until you are able to block it off?

You could use a banister guard like this or do a DIY with something similar or use some mdf. Tbh if it's your own house and you're thinking of more dc in the future you could really do with getting new banisters fitted as soon as its feasible.

Panel them . The ladder rungs are risky . We have that style in this house but didn;t move here till Ds was nearly 4 and he's never been a climber. Thank you for the heads up tho as we have guest at weekend with a newish crawler baby.

At this age you can keep the door shut? That's what we did. My DD is now 19 months and doesn't go downstairs alone, waits to be carried. We couldn't use a safety gate upstairs because of the shape of the walls and have no accidents so far.

We have a guard like the one HP linked to, it is barely visible.

I think it depends on how adventurous your child is - we haven't put any stair gates on but kept close supervision of dd when she was crawling and early walking and taught her how to go up and down safely. She has v good balance now at 22 months and can go up and down the stairs on her hands and knees no problem. So far no accidents (touch wood). She knows not to play near the top of the stairs but in general she is not particularly accident prone so we are fairly confident. If she were more clumsy and prone to tripping/falling I'd maybe have acted differently and put on guards.