A what age did you let your kids go up and down the stairs?

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CDSW11
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A what age did you let your kids go up and down the stairs?

Postby CDSW11 » Wed Aug 16, 2017 8:04 pm

Hello, we are about to move into a house and there are stairs of course. We were about to buy gates to put at the top and bottom of each staircase and suddenly wondered:
"Is our 20 mo daughter old enough to be trusted to go up and down alone?"

She certainly can walk up 3 steps with her hand on the wall, a whole staircase will probably take a couple of weeks practising.

What is your experience?
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Bunnypigeon1
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Re: A what age did you let your kids go up and down the stairs?

Postby Bunnypigeon1 » Wed Aug 16, 2017 9:22 pm

I really would recommend putting stair gates up, especially if you are planning on having more babies, because it will be the one second you take your eye of them that they fall down the stairs. Also at night, if they leave their room to come to yours (or if they sleepwalk like one of mine does!), then stairgates really ease your mind....
Not all of them need to be screwed into the wall, a lot work on a pressure basis....
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AbbevilleMummy
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Re: A what age did you let your kids go up and down the stairs?

Postby AbbevilleMummy » Wed Aug 16, 2017 10:56 pm

We never used stair gates and never had any accidents. Kids tend to be careful and nervous naturally around heights. I remember seeing this great study which showed crawling babies skirting around a perspex section of a floor as they though they would fall through. Fascinating. Anyway, from my experience it is when they are much older and more confident that they run up and down the stairs, trip and fall over and hurt themselves (like my 7 year old almost daily! :roll: )
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Purple_sage
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Re: A what age did you let your kids go up and down the stairs?

Postby Purple_sage » Wed Aug 16, 2017 11:00 pm

petal wrote:We never had stair gates, I can't remember any age when we started trusting them.
What we did however was to make rules for how they were allowed to approach the stairs.
So when quite small only crawling backwards. Then when a bit bigger bitter only by holding on and one step at the time.
Basically watching the kids abilities and taking it from there.
We never had a single accident.
It kind of depends of your situation and kids.

I think at nearly two you might be OK, I would definitely try without. If you change your mind you can always get some anyway.
Second what Petal said on teaching them from young to crawl down backwards when coming down the stairs. Although at 20 months old, may be a bit late for your daughter but you can gauge how gung-ho she is? Was something our nanny taught us with our first and we continued the same approach with our second. We moved from a bungalow to a terraced house when my oldest was one and bought 3 stairs gates initially but thankfully my nanny told us about this trick. Never ended up using any stair gates
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oab
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Re: A what age did you let your kids go up and down the stairs?

Postby oab » Thu Aug 17, 2017 8:14 am

We didn't have stair gates either, for either of our 2 children. It does mean that you have to supervise them more, especially when they are downstairs so they don't go up on their own. Our eldest is naturally cautious, so no problems. But our youngest doesn't have a sense of danger, so at 2 and 3 months we still supervise him when he goes up and down the stairs (i.e. Stay behind him or in front of him).
We close the door to his bedroom at night so he doesn't end up on the stairs all by himself.
You should probably teach your LO how to go up and down as the others have advised, and see how it goes and if you still think you need the gates.
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LP73
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Re: A what age did you let your kids go up and down the stairs?

Postby LP73 » Thu Aug 17, 2017 9:17 pm

We don't have stair gates and hVe had no accidents. We taught our LO to go backwards down the stairs, then to walk holding on.
We bought stair gates and they have sat in the box ever since. Teaching them to go backwards and progress will help you when staying with friends, in hotels etc.
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lemondrizzles
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Re: A what age did you let your kids go up and down the stairs?

Postby lemondrizzles » Fri Aug 18, 2017 10:40 pm

Our son walked up stairs at a little over a year and is learning now at 1 1/2 (17mos) to slide down on belly, still supervised. I find the gate is great to lock him upstairs. Though when he asks, we still open it.

With or without it, I would still supervise his trips on the stairs.
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