Friday, September 9th, 2011 at
3:36 am
Our daughter is 12 1/2 months old and we NEVER put a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs, but did have one at the top of the stairs. She has, for the last month, been climbing up the stairs without us even watching her. Since she is so good at it, I don’t even fret about it. I would like to encourage her more often to go down the stairs on her stomach, but she seems disinterested in going down, though she will if we require her to. Still, I think not having a baby gate at the bottom rapidly increased her skill level, strength, and safety using the stairs and I think we are better off because we never had one. All of our neighbor’s with similar aged babies have them, and wonder why we don’t.
To clear up any confusion, my daughter has never had one at the bottom of the stairs, ever. She is 12.5 months old and why have a baby gate when you can just close your child’s door isntead? Much like my neighbor’s backyard fence they installed to trap their daughter, I think it’s easier and more useful to "teach them" as opposed to restricting them. We were the same with her walking, she was doing it at 10.5 months and now walks quickly and well without assistance.
She climbs up the stairs barefoot. My goal is for her to learn how to safely get down the stairs and I will supervise and work with her until she is confident in her abilities. We often times let her climb up the stairs unsupervised. My wife did not like at first, but she now agrees that my daughter can climb without our staring her down. Over protective neighbor’s and friends still think it’s crazy, but I think they are just lazy parents/teachers.
It’s not about convenience Brooke, it’s about teaching them and their practicing. No way do I agree that it’s more convenient NOT to have gates than to have them. That’s just ridiculous. Lazy parents have gates, engaging parents teach.
OK, I think the most frustrating part of the comments is people commenting that my daughter "can’t possibly" be able to do this on her own. Yet again this morning she did without fail. For the record, we do have carpet on our stairs so perhaps that is why I am comfortable with it. At 8 months, she held herself on a pull up bar during baby gym class, and at one year we saw her lift a bocci ball all on her own and those things are heavy. So, perhaps your problem is lack of practice, don’t fear your children, let them build their muscles instead.
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