terraced garden with young kids - it's going to be a nightmare, isn't it?

[narmada]

Seen a house after many moons of looking that is perfect in many respects for us. It has more interior space than we've come across by a long chalk. The major downside is a relatively small garden out back which is terraced. Currently the owners have got a trampoline on one level (fenced, thank god) and a little play house on another level. There's a bit of flat area, currently crazy paved, but not much in the way of grass.

Is this a recipe for disaster with small kids - thinking of potential for falls etc. Our 3 year old is fine on stairs and very cautious, but we also have a 6 month old baby boy who might be walking by next summer.

I think you are worrying too much.Kids adapt very quickly and will soon learn to be like little mountain goats.Each of my 4 dc's fell over once and never did it again in my mountainous garden [we live up a very steep hill!].But i remember my mum being really worried and telling us not to buy the house beforehand.

I wouldn't worry, they soon learn how to get up and down. If there's a particularly perilous drop you could always have a fence and gate put in, we did this in our last house.

Excellent. thanks both. Worries put to rest. DD is not a particularly adventurous child and it's unlikely they'd be going out unsupervised much anyway.

Now we just have to convince the buyers that they want to sell it to us for substantially under the asking price - more difficult than it sounds around here owing to severe property-on-market shortage!

Lack of grass area may well become important as your DS gets older. Is this meant to be your long term house? Where is your DS going to kick a ball around? Is there a nearby park? We moved to a house with a much bigger garden has made a huge difference to my son but less so for my DD but she still loves being able to run around.

Tee hee, if DS takes after DH he won't be very interested in football, more likely to be interior design and weird music. But if he is, there's a huge park across the road. We're in greater London so big gardens are the exception rather than the norm unfortunately :(

We moved into a house with a terraced garden just a month before DD began walking. She's fine! She knows to wait we she gets the top of the steps for me to help her down, won't go up the steps that she can't hold onto a wall/railing on.

YOu can always pull up the crazy paving and lay sod down too :) Good luck!

Thanks sherunswithscissors. Great name too.

Our garden is quite steep and terraced, I thought it would be a total nightmare but it has actually been not too bad. Most of our levels are fenced off from each other.

It's obviously not as good as a flat garden, where you can just let them run riot, you need to keep a bit more of an eye on them.

OP are you joking? I guess 75% of British people live in terraced houses with terraced gardens and they are fine!!

Confused - you need to read the OP - terraced as in on different levels, not as in attached to other gardens

We have a terraced house and a (small) terraced garden - in both senses of the word! We also have a 17 month old dd and she's been fine in the garden.

We have recently taken the terracing out at the back to lay a lawn for football etc as I thought grass would be more useful and also we had pebbles before and dd kept throwing / eating them. Anyway we still have steps on the decking along the side of the house and a step into every room downstairs (as we're on a hill...) and aside from once falling down the front steps of the house (v. scary but she escaped unscathed), she hasn't fallen on any of the steps - she's just got used to them. And if your ds is only 7 months old now, he won't have known any different.

My dd is now fab on steps and therefore much safer than many others