Hellobee Boards

@Foodnerd81: In the nap situation, where is your gate? Could you put it either (a) on the door of the baby's room or (b) at the bottom of the stairs, rather than the top? Or would one gate in each of those locations perhaps solve the problem - keeping your baby safe while limiting the amount of trekking around you have to do to give the 3 year old freedom of movement?

Currently with a 4 and almost 2.5 year old, the only gate we have is at the top of our stairs (going down from the kitchen/living area to the bedrooms). Often it's left open, but I still close it sometimes when I want to limit the area in which the kids are able to make a mess, or block the kids upstairs if I need to do some kind of cleaning downstairs and can't have them underfoot. I realize this is WAY longer than most people probably keep a gate up, but I find it saves me a lot of headaches.

@Foodnerd81: I totally get it! I think what you're describing would work - by the time she learns to turn doorknobs, she may be pretty secure on the stairs. I was REALLY surprised at how quickly DD2 learned to go down our very steep stairs very securely - the benefits of being a second child, I guess!

When DS was a baby I assumed we needed a gate at the of the stairs...because, stairs. But after we installed it I realized I never let him roam in the hallway unsupervised and it was pretty useless.

We have an almost 4 year old and a 14m old. We have gates all over the place (the kitchen, the living room, and top of the stairs). DS1 has no idea or interest in trying to open them....he just asks us when he needs one opened. It works fine for us.