Safety Gates

[fluffhead]

Our new house has stairs....we've never had stairs before!
Anyway, has anybody had good experiences with those safety gates? It would be nice to be able to do work in the kitchen without having to make sure the baby isn't tumbling down the stairs.
The clerk in the store said I can't use pressure mounted gate for the top of the stairs...is this true? I guess I should have researched this first.

[PrincessFiona]

baby gates

Yes, definately avoid the pressure mounted at the top of the stairs..and if memory serves, the gate should be installed as far away from the top of the stairs as possible.

We're going to have to deal with this again soon too....so keep track of all of the babyproofing stuff you guys are doing...I'll need your advice soon!!!

kris

[mommax3]

I have heard that about the pressure mounted gate at the top of the stairs, too -- I think the reason is that if the kid really leans on it and it gives way, they are going to have a hard tumble because of the force they were applying to the gate.

If you spend most of your time downstairs, could you get away with a gate just at the bottom of the steps? That is what we did in our last house.

I forget how old your little one is, but I always made a point to teach my kids very early how to go up and down the stairs -- crawl up on their bellies and go down feet first, also on their bellies. These were carpeted stairs and not overly steep -- it may not work for you. It just helped because I was always tripping over the gate when I tried to put away laundry, or when I was carrying said kid, and we were able to put the gate away a little sooner that way. It also helped when we visited homes (grandparents) that had stairs and no gates -- the stairs had been "de-mystified" at our house, so our boys weren't drawn to them like they would have been otherwise.

Sally

We go up and down our back stairs a lot -- to get outside, to the garage, downstairs to laundry, etc. We used one of those "pass-through" gates that had a handle/latch contraption to swing the gate open. That worked really well for us. And our very active, very determined child never knocked it over or was able to get around it.

I would also recommend the latch system gates as well. If you must use a pressure one, use it only at the bottom. My youngest took a spill down the stairs when she was 9 months old and broke her leg, so I can't stress stair safety enough.

Sally, that's so funny. Thats exactly how we taught the girls. i can still here the badum badum badum of them going backwards down the stairs fast.

[Meenah]

I just put in safety gates for the puppy!!!! To keep him out of certain areas of the house (the one's with carpet!!). I used gates when my daughters were babies, but not the pressure kind at the top of the stairs.
Luanne

[fluffhead]

Thanks for all the tips...I'm procrastinating buying the thing and still have to be around when she's upstairs, mostly because we're still so touchy about making holes in our new house. At this rate she'll be a teenager before we get around to it. But it will be so much more convenient when we get it and I can feel safe going downstairs with herin her room.