I Hate Stairgates

Anyone with kids will appreciate this. My youngest son has reached that stage when his is mobile enough to move around the house on foot and climb the stairs. Most of our house is now childproof (due to the experience of raising his two older siblings), but some rooms are just not entirely safe for him to wander around unsupervised. Consequently I have fitted a couple of stairgates in an attempt to limit his roaming. With one child this works well. With two kids with a four year age gap it also works pretty well, but with just two and a half years between my two youngest there is a problem.

My middle child is too old to need stairgates, old enough to need to get through them (eg. to the bathroom) but too young to be able to open them himself. Therefore he needs help. This is a hassle for my wife and I but we can cope with that. But it is also a hassle for him and a four year old doesn’t always want to wait for Mum and Dad to let him through one of the gates. He is however strong enough and mentally adept enough to find other ways of getting past such an obstacle. So he pushes low items of furniture and other items up to the stairgate so that he can climb over the top. Of course once he is safely down on the other side he cannot move those items away. His younger brother sees his number one role model climb and discovers that he can do the same thing. He’s not strong enough to move a chair or footstool yet, but that ceases to be an issue when it’s already been done for him. Suffice to say, one year olds are not too skilled at dropping neatly down the other side of a Stairgate and landing on their feet!

Both of our Stairgates are fitted with an inner gate which opens to allow passage when the correct buttons are pressed and slid in the right directions. Now I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as overweight, but I’ve over six feet tall and appropriately wide. As a consequence I don’t quite fit through the gap revealed when the inner gate is open. I have to turn sideways to clear the sides and unfortunately don’t always remember to do this, especially when carrying stuff. Have you any idea just how much damage a stairgate can do when your inadvertently rip it from its fixings, ripping wallpaper and splintering woodwork. Or how painful it can when you remember to turn sideways and stand awkwardly on the metal base of the stairgate with bare feet? But even these pale into insignificance when one comes down the stairs, pauses to open the gate, fails to get the safety catch to release, overbalances, falls over the gate, knocking it from its fixings before tumbling onto the surprising high-friction carpet beyond. I’m sure it takes a lot less force to stick a limb between the bars of the gate than it does to pull it back out!

So far I am sure that I’ve had more accidents due to the stairgates than my son has been saved from. He’s small and he bounces. I’m big and I don’t! But I will continue to be a good parent, tolerating the damage to my home and injuries to myself because sometimes the gates top my son escaping from the safer areas of my house. Hopefully they will stop him climbing into the toilet or locking himself inside the dishwasher.