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We don't have a stair gate so my 3.5 year old has access to the stairs in theory, but she tends to cone to me - I sleep on the same floor - and has never tried to access the stairs at night. I would be too worried about fire safety to close it.

For the past year, E has left his room for the bathroom. His room is right near the stairs. It's never been a problem for him. There's a nightlight in the hallway near the bathroom. This helps a lot to guide him there if he's drowsy.

We have a gate at the top of the stairs for J, but I do leave it latched at night. Same setup - our bathroom is right across from the stairs and I worry that in the dark and half asleep she could trip or something. I'm sure it's really unlikely but hey - mom worries!

We also have the same situation. We close the gate. DS1 never gets out of bed by himself anyway, but just in case, I don't want him tripping in the dark! We do also have a nightlight in the hall, but I'd rather just use the gate since it's there.

Same setup at our house and the gate is closed. I'm scared of what you said, him falling down the stairs half asleep.

We've actually never gated the stairs, even when he was learning to walk. He was pretty cautious and never attempted them or went near them without one of us until he could go down on his belly or bump down on his butt. We'll see how A is, but I imagine we'll do the same.

If my 3.5 year old's bathroom wasn't attached to her bedroom I would have insisted on gating the top of the stairs. It's one of those things that's really not a big deal to do, so why not take the step to be extra safe?

My oldest son is 4.5 and we still close the gate at the top of the stairs most nights. His room is right next to the stairs and although he very rarely gets up in the middle of the night and we have our foyer light dimmed and on I don't take any chances. It takes two seconds to close the gate so for us it's worth the piece of mind.

We actually just took our gate down last week for our 3 1/2 year old. We had no problem with it up but had the floors redone and can't justify putting it back up. LO's room is upstairs and while he's in a bed, he does not go to the bathroom by himself at night yet, so I am less worried about stairs and nighttime.

DS' room is right by the stairs and he usually comes out and straight to our room if he has to go potty in the motn. We moved to our new house right before his 2nd bday and never put gates up. So far no ones fallen down the stairs!

We aren't there yet, but I a planning on putting a gate at the top of the stairs as soon as we move. Partly because we have an almost crawling baby who is fast, but I also worry the 3 year old could come out of her room confused and take a wrong turn or stumble. All our bedrooms are upstairs and we will leave our door open if she needs us. Currently she doesn't come out of her room at night anyway (sleeps in a pull up but if she wakes up she just cries for us, even though she is able to leave the room).

Plus I think it's a good habit to always close the gate if you need it during the day- like during the day my toddler would be fine having access to the stairs but the baby isn't. But I don't know- I have never lived in a house with stairs and kids before!

When I was a toddler there was no stair gate, and the bathroom was opposite the stairs. I never fell. However, at 4 or 5 years old I apparently made a regular habit of going downstairs, outside, and to the playground down the street in the middle of the night. This habit was discovered when I tried to hitchhike to the lake and my would-be ride turned me in. I wanted to know why it was fine to go to the playground by not the lake...and my parents were all, "playground??"

@cheesetomywhine: @PinkElephant: I meant more in the sense of an an emergency with the child in the middle of the night - if they got sick, or were scared, or something happened upstairs.

@Adira: DD hasn't moved into her big girl bedroom yet but once she does she will have to pass the stairs to get to the bathroom and both DH and I are worried she might stagger or trip (she's a blankey girl and might drag blankey out with her at night) and fall down the stairs so we plan to put up a gate and latch it once we move her.

We did not have a gate until the baby started crawling and my 3 year old did fine. Her room is not right by the stairs though. I might just lay a gate across the top of the stairs at night if it was super close and I was concerned.

We've had LO1 in a big boy bed since he was a little over 2 and have never had a gate at our stairs. He comes into our room at least 3 or 4 times/week in the middle of the night, and we've never had an issue. We also have a full flight of stairs that lead down to hardwood floors.

I may be paranoid over here too, but I'd totally leave the gate closed due to "you never know's"!