I have a 3 1/2 yo boy and my daughter will be 2 Jan 6th, we are not palnning on having anymore children, so my husband just asked me when he could take down the baby gate and I have no idea! It is located in the kitchen which leads to the downstairs family room/garage, it is a highly used thing in a high traffic area. The kids use the stairs very well, never unsupervised though, so do we wait til they can go unsupervised? Around what age is that? When did you Mamas take it down?
Thank you everyone for your informative advice, as always! I think we will keep it up for another year unless someone is trying to climb over it. Right now they just ride it like a swing as it closes, it is a VERY heavy duty metal gate with a latch that takes two hands no matter what and is tricky unless you are used to it, so they will not be opening it themselves. My main concern is that one of them would inadvertently be pushed down the stairs (wood) as they are tearing around the corner. Keep the grest advice and support coming!
If you take the gate down - do you think that one of the kids will just walk down there while you are in the bathroom or something?? Do you want them to have "free range" to that area as well? I would wait until more like 4.5 and 3 - one more year.
When we took ours down, the kids were 5 and 3. That said, they are back up now to keep the dog contained!
Someday, I'll get my house back...
LBC
It depends what they can get into. Do you worry about them underfoot when you have boiling water on the stove? Are there medications and cleaning chemicals accessible? Do they have smaller friends who come to play? Is there a huge tv not anchored? If so, you may want to keep the gate to contain them at certain times.
But in general age 3-4 is proabably time to get rid of it. Our's are 3 and 7, and we have no more gates downstairs. We have one at the top of the stairs we only close at night to prevent a fall in the dark. We also have a key locked door to our unfihished basement.
I think that if it's an open staircase that the children will walk by regularly you should keep it up awhile longer. Sure, if they are deliberately going down the stairs, they will do so carefully. However, if there is a chance they could unintentionally fall down the stairs from simply getting too close to the top or being bumped in that direction, I would leave it up. It really depends on what will give you the most peace of mind!
I took mine down once they could climb over it, they are just now 3 1/2 and 2 so that was about 9 months ago. If they're not trying to climb over it constantly, which is what mine did, than you might as well leave it up for a little while longer.
For the sake of your 2 yo, maybe keep it up another year. I think we took ours down after our kid was 3.
i agree with the other ladies. 2 (not quite) is still pretty young. since there are stairs involved i would leave it up another year or so.
I took mine down as soon as the kids could open it themselves. No point to keep it up if the kids were not stopped by it. for us that was whn the youngest was18 months old, so year, it would be down already.
We took gates down to the stairs ( bottom of the steps that lead upstairs) when they started trying to climb over them. It became more of danger to have them climbing over the gate than them using the stairs.
We took ours down when we trusted that both of our kids couldn't get hurt or into anything dangerous if they played by themselves in an area.
In other words, when total silence from the other room doesn't = an "uh oh"!
With my son, that was around 2 (the house was totally kid proofed).
When they can open it :) I still have two left, mostly to keep the dogs downstairs and my 3 y/o...although she has pushed chairs to get over and just plain rammed through it. The other is into the basement, and I don't need the 3 y/o in the basement or the dogs (raiding the litter box...eeeew.) I removed the others when the kids were adept at the stairs.
Once they can climb over it or open etc..time to take it down. :)
We took ours down when our kids were 2 and 4. The youngest just needs to be able to comfortably walk up and down stairs alone and know to always hold the railing. Then you'll feel safe without it up.
Our baby gate came down when the youngest of 6 was 12 months old. He couldn't walk very well but could climb better than a monkey. Nothing scarier than watching your baby boy sliding down the stairs on the baby gate.
It's funny now but I was certain it trimmed at least 10 years off of my life.
