Stairgate or no stairgate?

[CosieRotton]

Hello, currently debating with my partner over this. He wants one, I don’t.

We’re in a fairly typical extended Victorian semi. Front sitting room, middle room, extended kitchen and 3 bedrooms upstairs. Narrow stairs in hall.

I would rather put a gate on my son’s bedroom (upstairs room over the extension) and on the door of the middle room downstairs (his playroom) into hallway. Having a stairgate doesn’t feel safe to me in terms of carrying him down the stairs if I’m also having to faff about with one hand to get the gate open. And because it’s a narrow stairs the rail on one side will prevent the gate fully opening as well.

My theory is that the only rooms that we’ve made safe for him to be in unsupervised are the playroom and his bedroom, which have doors and will have gates too, and he shouldn’t be in any other room unsupervised so shouldn’t have access to the stairs that way.

He does love the stairs! He’s one if that’s relevant and still crawling.

Experiences? Anyone not had a stairgate and regretted it and ended up getting one? Anyone happy with not having used one?

I would say that you need one at the bottom of the stairs too.

We had a door at the bottom of the stairs. I hate baby gates as I think they are a fire risk

My opinion only I don't care if there links to prove it otherwise

They are designed to be easy to use with one hand. I would say it's wishful thinking that you'll be able to supervise every second of their day- especially as they grow up and get more mobile.

If they’re old enough to open a door they’re old enough to be taught stairs, so I wouldn’t put one anywhere that there’s a door. Although I do think you’re overestimating how closely he’ll be supervised in other rooms.

We put one of those mesh ones at the bottom of the stairs, so I can jump over it if I really need to but it's hard for babies to climb up something made of mesh 😏

We didn't use stair gates, supervised and taught DC to use stairs carefully instead.

We can’t fit one at the bottom of the stairs unfortunately, it would be really impractical due to specific things in our hallway. Otherwise I’d be happy with one there.

I don’t think I’ll be able to supervise 24/7 so that’s why we have rooms that are safe to leave him in unsupervised. And over he can start escaping the gates on those rooms there would be no point in a gate on the stairs anyway.

I never had stairgates. I taught my kids how to safely go up and down stairs. Labour intensive to begin with but never needed a stairgate for any of my 3 kids.
I never really baby proofed at all. Much better they learn how to be safe - the world isn't babyproofed! Much better when you go to other people's houses that don't have stair gates etc if baby knows how to be safe ☺️

I didn't supervise 24/7 it is not possible gate or not

Same here. The layout of our stairs makes them tricky to use, so we just emphasise that you never, ever go on them without a grown up. DD is 3 and still doesn’t.

@BouncingWorms i take your point re being redundant on rooms with doors. I suppose I was thinking that gives us the option of leaving the door open so we can hear him when we’re doing other stuff. Eg him playing in his room when we’re running the bath next door.

No baby gates here either. Think they're more if a hazard tbh. We have 2 flights of narrow steep stairs in our Victorian terrace, and few random mezzanine (ish, not really a mezzanine) stairs as well. It's a bit stair higgledy-piggledy in our house! Just taught baby how to use the stairs safely. Coming up 2.5y now, toddler is confident to use the stairs sensibly and does so alone sometimes now - Sneaks into the the room when I think they're downstairs with DH and tries to make me jump 🤭 Baby 2 due soon and won't be getting any then either. Very happy to have saved the money.

Entirely depends on the child. My friend's child came round age 1.5 and was much better on the stairs than mine at 3.

With the first we had a top of stairs gate only. He couldn't escape the living room with the door shut and would happily go inthe play pen if needed. Second one would not be contained! Living room door was no barrier and would just scream at the play pen, so we got a gate for bottom of stairs. The top stairs one is a concertina one, so no trip bar at the base and takes up less space. We still use it at night now as one often wakes up and comes to find us.

We've got a stairgate on his bedroom door and I'd definitely advise that - in my case his bedroom is right at the top of the stairs and he's sleepwalked before, but it also means I can do things like put things up the loft while knowing he's safe and still in earshot and I'm not suddenly going to have someone behind me up the ladder. I like that we don't have to have the door closed so we can check in on him at night without making lots of noise by just stepping over the gate.

He's just turned 4 and has been able to open it for a while but we still keep it there. Admittedly mainly for my paranoia about the sleep walking, but it also takes him a while to wake up and the mechanism for opening it is complicated enough that if he's awake enough to open it he's awake enough to clock where the stairs are. Admittedly this is very specific to my house and my DS!

I have stair gates but both my mum and MIL have commented that they raised e kids with no stair gate and no one ever fell down the stairs

We didn’t have stairgates, but taught all mine to safely go down stairs backwards from as soon as they could crawl.

Also a Victorian semi with stairs and half landings, and a few steps between the sitting room and kitchen.

We believed it would be much more likely to cause an accident if we had 8 stairgates all over the house as trip hazards

They have all been fine, and always safely navigated stairs with close supervision until they were around 3, and then fine to go up and down by themselves after that

We spent hours and hours with DS going down on his bottom and up on all fours

never used SG