Hi Everyone, I need your help. I live in a 2 story house that the stairs from downstairs go straight up. When my daughter started crawling at 7 months I bought safety gates for the top and bottom of the stair way and also her bedroom, which has worked great. But now when she is downstairs she has figured out how to climb on the out side of the stair way which is about five feet and stants up toward the stairs. She climbs up and sneaks through the bars. I tell her it's not safe and get her down and direct her to something else but..That just doesn't seem to work. I am just wondering if other moms have gone through this and what you have done.
Thanks
Just spend some time teaching her how to come back down. She'll catch on quick. Whatever you do don't install something like plexiglass to barricade her. What will you do when you're done with it? Just throw it in the landfill?
Good Luck
Teach her how to climb the stairs the more gates the more they want to climb, I have a tri-level home & we solved this problem quick! Yes, it was nerve racking at first but you just have to teach them. Then they feel more confident & you can feel a little more at ease.
I always worried to death about my boys falling down the stairs. Until I taught them how to scoot down the stairs on their bottoms. it became a game and I found they would crawl up the stairs and scoot down on their bottoms. It will be fine.
N.
As soon as my kids could go up the stairs, I taught them to go down backwards. I would bring them to the stairs, turn them around so that they were feet first, then put one foot down, then one hand, then the other foot, and then the other hand. I kept doing this until they did it on their own.
The safety gates didn't work for us so I did this and I didn't have to worry about them getting safely down the stairs.
I have five children. We have lived in a two story home with our last three and each have learned to go up and down quite early. My youngest is 11.5 months and she has been climbing the stairs for several months. She has just learned how to climb down them. It's amazing how smart our little ones are. When she showed interest in climbing we climbed up right behind her. When she started showing interest in climbing down them (about a week ago!) we again were right there. Children are amazingly adaptable! If you have stairs don't be afraid to encourage them to climb up and down them and then remove the barricades when she has confidently mastered them. (Quite honestly the most effective thing I've found is to tip my coffee table on it's side to block the top of the stairs - we have a open loft right there-it's too heavy to for her to move, too tall for her to climb over and I got it for $5 at a garage sale :o) ). I no longer use it because she is a whiz at it. I now just keep doors shut so she can safely play in the free zones and stay out of the off limit ones!
It's scary watching them learn those stairs (my heart still quickens when I see her), but children adapt very quickly to their environments when we allow them to develop at their own pace. Good luck!
Dear J.:
Your daughter sounds like she is very bright...perhaps bright enough to understand that there will be consequences based on her actions. Maybe speaking to her in a firm voice is consequence enoigh. Each parent knows their child. Keep in mind though that it's better to hurt her feelings than to have her get hurt by her own actions.
Tamara
*as with everything, seek God's help.
The bars of a banister need to be no more than 5 inches apart. If she can get through, your banister is older and not up to code. My friend's daughter fell from the second floor to the first floor due to an older staircase and banister/railing. She had a skull fracture and was in the hospital overnight. Please do not allow this or something worse to happen to your child or someone else who is visiting. Either replace the railing with one that a child cannot fit through or at least invest in the plastic or fabric safety sheets that you can place along the railing so she cannot get through (Try One Step Ahead catalog or on-line for this item).
Buy some plexiglas and have it cut to fit the slant of your stairs. Drill holes in it on either side of the bars. Use zip-ties to fasten the plexiglass to the bars. That will prevent her from sliding through the bars.
Your next problem will been when she is big enough to climb over the gates entirely. Some are able to do this at 15 mos. so watch out.
C.
I have a 4 yr old son and a 2.5 yr old daughter. My daughter is in perpetual climbing mode. Bottom line: We decide what she may and may not do. We are very stern with her if she goes against our will. For example, just yesterday, we removed the side of her crib because I'm expecting #3 in June and I don't want to have to get her every time she wakes up. She's been able to climb into or out of her crib for the last year, but we don't let her. We told her she may not do it and when she has defied that rule she's is scolded very firmly. Yes, it brings tears, but I am her parent and I decide. After a few attempts that followed with consequences, she stopped.
Your daughter is only 17 months old. YOU need to decide what she may and may not do, unequivocally. Being nice won't get you anywhere. Be firm and she will be a more confident person as she grows because she knows what her boundaries are.
I used to be an elementary school teacher before my son. I saw the effects of "careful" parenting and it's helped me produce two children who are confident, so far. I'm utterly exhausted at the end of the day, but that's my job.
good luck
Becoming a parent is easy, being an effective parent is hard. Be strong.
I went thorough the same thing with my boys. I'ts time to take down the gate and teach her to safely go up and down the stairs. She wants to be up the stairs and she's going to continue to try to get what she wants. She's old enough to be able to crawl up and then learn to back down the stairs on her belly. I assume she's walking so it won't take her long to figure out how to walk up the stairs instead of crawl. Just be sure you teach her either back down the stairs on her belly or sit on each stair and come down on her bumm. Either way is much safer than crawling up the edge of the stair treads. Make sure your upstairs rooms are off limits to her if you don't want her in the other bedrooms or the bathroom for instance. Close the doors and put doorknob covers on the hallway side of the doors. Good luck, it's a little nerve wracking at first, but in the end, she will be safer.
It depends--are the stairs carpeted or wooden? Carpeted stairs are easier to deal with; a softer blow if they roll a little on them. I taught my last two babies how to go down "toesies first," by turning them around feet first every time they headed for the stairs. We live in a four story condo, with a landing every halfway, which is easier too. We've actually never had gates in this house, as someone was always there with baby, and they learned quickly and well how to get up and down them! There is no substitute for being there with your child as she learns to explore this, and it's natural and healthy for her to want to climb at this age developmentally. Before this we lived in a place with stone stairs outside our front door; these were more frightening. I was careful to stay near my child, helping him learn to navigate stairs safely and carefully.
You can get some mesh netting and put on the inside and outside of the stair rails or get some heavy duty plastic/plexiglass and secure it to the stair rails.
Have you introduced time out yet? I think she is old enough to understand. For things like that, I would tell my son several times that he wasn't allowed to do it, and if he kept doing it, I would tell him I was going to put it on time out. At this age, no longer than 1 minute or so. Eventually, they make the connection. It's all about consistency, consistency, consistency. Easier said than done. Later on, when they are more verbal, it is easier because they understand the notion of danger, hurt, etc... But now is a good time to introduce boundaries and consequences. It is frustrating for the parents and will take time, but that is our job as parents, right? To teach them to make the right choices, and let them feel the consequence if they don't.
Dear J.:
If you had a pool you would fence it, maybe even put an alarm in it, but most importantly, you would make sure your child knew how to swim.
Teach her to manage the stairs. We had the same configuration in our house and the first thing I did was teach my son to come down the stairs on his tummy, feet first. We did it together at first, it was a game. But I insisted that every time we went downstairs, he used his tummy. All I had to say was "tummy time." After a short while, he did it automatically and I never had to worry about him falling. Give it a go.
M.
You can't stop progress! I think that if your daughter is that determined to get up the stairs you should take advantage of it and teach her how to do it safely. It's great exercise for her to go up and down, you'll just have to be super diligent watching her. We had a gate at the top of our stairs while all mine were little and all the neighbors thought we were nuts, but it really ended up fostering their independence early on. So we taught then to slide down on their tummy and to crawl up on their hands and knees and this was the way we insisted that it be done or else they were carried up/down. They really never gave us a hard time about it and loved doing it that way.
Good luck!
Hello,
We actually put our gates in the kitchen doorways and were able to keep our son with us when we were downstairs, in the kitchen/family room area. Because the location of those two gates really worked for use, we didn't need to put gates on the stairs.
We taught our son how to go down the steps, by sitting on his bottom and slowly going from step to step. We did this side by side, next to him. I think it's more dangerous, in your case, to keep the gate at the bottom, because she is going up on the out side of the stairs. :{
For you daughters interest to go up, I'd recommend spending more time with her at the bottom of the stairs and showing her how to go up, crawling-like, on all fours, so she doesn't do it standing up. And if possible, put the gates in another area of the house where you already spend more time, to keep her there.
Hope this was helpful. Oh, and if the doorway is bigger than a standard door, like ours are, we purchased the gates at ToysRUs wich came with extra partitions and we made the gates longer.
Some stairs are a little more difficult to work with than others - I've been there too. I'm assuming moving isn't an option for you. There is a website/magazine called www.leapsandbounds.com. they have some of the coolest child safety products I've ever seen. At one point I had a problem with my toddler crawling through the railing of the staircase and hanging 10 feet up in the air. I almost had a heart attack the first time I saw that! this company sells sturdy plastic shields that keep the child from crawling through the railing. I really hope this helps. I know it can be so scary.
We bought a mesh net that is for balconies and stair cases. It has been a life saver for us as it prevents our son from climbing the gates (we don't have stairs, but it works great for gates as well). It is made for those spaces between stairs and other small places, so it should work. I don't remember if we bought it at Lowe's (in their child proofing area), or at Babie's R Us, either place should have something.
It just ties to the rails to prevent little one's from climbing through or over. Just make sure it is tied tight at all times (they can be adjusted if necessary!).
Good luck.
Your daughter is definitely at the stage where she knows that you don't want her to do something and if she is determined to do it, she will find a way. I agree that the best thing to do right now is to teach her how to safely navigate the stairs and to teach her that she is allowed to do so only when you or another responsible adult is around. You don't need to be right next to her, but be close enough to soothe her if she falls. This is an early life lesson for her and for you and her parent to learn. Falling happens. She will have to learn from the pain of falling and you will have to learn as her parent to let her go and let her fall.
Although we never had stairs in our house, my son at the exact same age was fascinated by stairs. So anywhere we went, if there were stairs, he was all over them no matter what we did. So we would follow him up and down the stairs over and over again. We taught him at first to crawl up them and go down them on his belly. THen after a few months we taught him to go down them on his bottom and then eventually to walk down them holding the rails. This fascination with stairs ended just after he turned 2. THen he was onto other things. And so far he has never fallen from stairs.
S.
Hi J.,
I don't know if this will help or not, but maybe you could get an Xpen that they use for dogs to go around the bottom of the stairs so she can't even get to them. I just hope she doesn't decide to climb on it. However, it certainly would be a much smaller fall.
I have a question for you! Was your daughter colicky? Or maybe a challenging baby? The reason I ask is, I have a 3 month old daughter who was very colicky and still is somewhat. She is extremely hard to keep entertained and hard to get to sleep. I can not put her down when she's asleep, because she wakes up within minutes screaming and the will not go back to sleep for more than a couple minutes even if I continue to hold her.
I was just hoping you could help!
S.
We also have a banister that our daughter can fit through so we put plexi glass along the opening so it blocks her from going through and makes me somewhat sane again. It's alittle pricey but totally worth it to secure your child's safety. We put it along the openings then drilled holes and used zip ties to secure it. The first few times our daughter walked into it and was like "what the heck?" It didn't take long for her to stop and avoid it all together because she knew there was no entry. Kids are funny that way. We could probably take it off now and she would never go near it. Anyway, you can find the pexi glass at Lowe's, Home Depot or Dixieline. Good luck.
My third child started the same thing at about the same age, but a few smacks to her bottom and a firm no when I found her doing it,she stopped. I was never one to "spare the rod and spoil the child" and I definitely never tried to reason with a 17month old. At times its hard to reason with a 20 year old which she is now let alone a baby. You dont have to BEAT her but be firm.
I am a grandmother of 6 grandchildren. In our two story house, all of the babies loved to go up and down the stairs. Like you, we installed gates to keep them safe BUT we had to take it one step further. My husband installed acrylic sheets to the sides of the stairs and across the top at the second story so the grandkids did not fall through... we also have seen this done with netting. 17 month old don't understand safety... so just protect her and let her learn to climb the stairs when you are there with her and install the acrylic or netting to protect her when she's quicker than you are!
We never stopped our kids from going up and down the stairs. They did it at different times, but we allowed it. We aren't into baby-proofing, as we are more into teaching them to be safe. Our 21 months old has been crawling up the stairs probably for a year now...and he's fallen once - but he learned from that to be more careful...and it hasn't happened since. Our first son, I was a litte more uptight about the stairs.
If your daughter can get up and down the stairs by crawling and does it well, then maybe let her. It sounds like a very determined AND capable girl. I wouldn't want to hinder that characteristic, especially ina girl in today's society.
I would buy the mesh rail guard material to keep her out, which is what we had to do. We started with the gates at the bottom and top, then had to add the rail guard because my kids could fit through the railings (we're in an older house so the gap between rails is about 8 inches). My kids are now fine going up and down the stairs so we've removed the gates, however, we've had to keep the rail cover since they could still stand at the top of the stairs and fall through if they cover wasn't there. The guards are fairly inexpensive at Babies R' Us. Hope this helps!
J.
I didn't have stairs to contend with, but you either have to baby-proof or modify the design so it impossible for your daughter to get into a dangerous situation or, perhaps it's time to take the baby gates down and let her go up and down the steps. I know I had steps when I was under 5 and I do remembering falling once. Maybe I was 3 and I thought that I could've killed myself and only after that was I more careful. It really wasn't that serious of a fall - but when everyone has told you you're going to get hurt, when you finally do, it then will sink in. My son did not learn any sort of caution until he was 7 and fell off his bike requiring stitches. I think that fall at a young age was a lot better than him taking chances and being dangerous at a later age, when he can fall even harder.
Good luck!
We had issues with our stairs as well if you live in so cal call family first 1800-41-STEPS. I would ask for Bryan Charles, he's great and won't oversell you!
Since she was crawling, I spent time on the stairs with my daughter teaching her how to safely go up and down them. I paired it with sign language too saying "'turn around' go down on your stomach" And I would always be right there with her. Now she's 22 mos. and I feel confident letting her do it by herself. although she knows not to play on the stairs..
good luck!
N.
A friend of mine bought clear acrylic paneling that attaches to the stairs so that her 2 kids can't fall through. I hope this helps.
