when to ditch stair gates?

[downwiththomas]

Our 2.7 year old son is a bundle of mischief but as trustworthy as any child of his age about really important safety stuff. He is physically confident up and down stairs.

At the moment we have a gate on the stairs but he has free range to play anywhere in the downstairs. He will generally play happily for max 10 mins in the front room before coming to find us in the sitting room or kitchen. We don't let him upstairs without us.

However we went to visit an older friend (3.3ish) and the boys disappeared upstairs together to play in friend's bedroom. I'd have supervised but friend's mum more relaxed than me and encouraged me to sit down and let them get on with it! DS clearly enjoyed it hugely and it led me to wonder if we should revise the stairgate situation.

So - at what age would you/ did you remove stairgates? And at what age would you allow a toddler to play in their room for brief periods? I doubt DS would do it alone for longer than 2 mins at present, but he might like to with a visiting friend.

All advice gratefully received. Thanks!

I think we took the stairgate down when DD was a bit over 2. We only had one at the top of the stairs and didn't ever really restrict movement around the house.

She is 3.3 now and has played in her room on her own for a while - I don't know how long for but definitely a number of months and could well be over a year. I also have DS who is 5.1 and they sometimes play together, although not that much.

Hope that helps a bit - personally I am very much for independent play wherever possible, although quite often have a small clingon DD .

omg - my dc are just 3, 5 and 8 ... and we still have gates at the top and bottom of our (fairly steep) stairs
We didnt manage to get the gates down between children, and we do still use them, so i guess they are staying put for a little while longer!!

I never had stairgates. It was problematic because we'd have had to have them specially built (v wide staircase) but tbh we never needed them and they didn't come to any harm. We watched our DCs until they stopped being shaky on their pins and once they can walk safely and are confident on the stairs, why do you need them?

well, I suppose the idea is to stop him escaping upstairs unsupervised and doing terrible things - which led to the question of when you'd allow toddlers to play in their room on their own.

I should add that his worst offences are currently unwinding all the loo roll, decorating his books with green felt tip and dunking the remote control in apple juice - oh, and 'washing' the loo floor with liquid soap. So he's far from a house wrecker if left to his own devices!

Interesting to see the range emerging already. Thanks :-)

dd is 5 and ds is 2.3years. We have a gate at the top of the stairs but it is only closed at night as ds's bedroom is right beside the stairs and I have a fear of him falling down them if he came out his room at night and turned the wrong way. He will go up to fetch things from the bedrooms by himself but doesnt really play up there as all the interesting toys are downstairs. He will go and play upstairs at my sisters house and she has no gates at all - her kids are 4, 5 and 9.

I have a gate to the kitchen and 2 stair gates. DD is 2.3 She would wreck her bedroom, empty bathroom contents all over floor, climb kitchen cupboards and empty drawers.

She is also not quite confident with the stairs...in fact she still just launches herself down

I'm not sure I'd be happy leaving a child who was still at the stage you are describing e.g. washing the floor with too much soap or dunking the remote. If he still does that sort of thing imho he needs a bit of supervision.

He gets plenty, don't worry - although I have to say the remote was dunked while I was in the room ...

I assumed he was likely to go on doing that sort of thing for some years! But I do agree general supervision is in order.

Currently he's never out of earshot and never out of sight for more than a few minutes without me checking on him.

I've always found that you'll end up ditchiung the stair gates the day before your DC falls down the stairs no matter what age that is

• sorry not very helpful

We only had one at the bottom but ditched it when he was about 2.4 as it broke and he could get passed it anyway. He can manage the stairs quite well, he has had a couple of slips but I think that helps them to be careful. He has gone up into his room to play on his own but if he does that we just check on him every 5 mins or so to make sure he is not getting up to mischief.

we've never had them - always taught them how to go up and down stairs from an early age. our stairs aren't steep though

I wouldn't leave a child that age for more than a few minutes unattended though. heaven forbid leaving 2 of them unattended!