Avivah Werner

Stair climbing and teaching independence

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Avivah

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Someone commented about the danger involved in allowing a baby to be in a home with stairs and no safety gate, which I didn’t agree with. Here’s my position:

I don’t think it’s a dangerous situation for a baby to be in a home with stairs, just dangerous to be in a home with stairs without being allowed to learn to safely climb them. I’ve lived in houses with stairs for my last three babies, never used a safety gate, and haven’t found this to be a concern. The way I deal with it may not be typical, but it works well for us and we’ve never had a baby fall down the stairs.

As soon as a baby shows signs of readiness to climb the stairs, I let him, staying close by (right behind him) in case he slips. As he gets more experienced, I give him more and more leeway (eg, staying within a step or two but not immediately behind him), until I’m confident that he can safely climb by himself. This doesn’t take a very long time, but does require the willingness to invest the time to help your baby become safely independent. My baby is now 15 months, and regularly climbed to the next floor without anyone around by the age of 12 months (probably earlier, I just can’t remember those kind of specifics).

This is reflective of my general approach to parenting, which is to help my kids navigate new situations by staying close in the beginning while allowing them to explore, and decreasing my presence/ help until they are ready to be independent. This applies as much to babies (eg, teaching them not to swallow small items by giving them the opportunity to learn to discriminate) as it does to older children (there are lots of life lessons then!).

I try not to say no just because I can picture something going wrong. Instead, I think about how to make the situation emotionally comfortable for me without stifling the child’s need to explore his environment. This process doesn’t stop, it’s ongoing as kids get older. My kids have a pretty good level of competence in many areas because I’ve given them room to develop competence, but that has never meant taking a hands off attitude and letting whatever happens, happen.

(I’ll continue in my next post with some examples of how this has played out with older kids.)

Avivah

Comments

2 responses to “Stair climbing and teaching independence”

  1. Janet Avatar
    Janet

    I remember using a baby gate only once at the top of our stairs. ds#6 learned to climb (jump, actually) out of his crib very young, and although he could handle the stairs at the time, I wanted to prevent his going downstairs while there was no one there to watch him early in the morning. It occurred to me the next morning that I had made it more dangerous bc if he could climb out of his crib he could certainly climb over that gate. That day we did lots of fun practice on calling for Mommy when he wanted to get out of his bed!

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  2. chana Avatar
    chana

    I am practically crying/laughing as I read this!

    This has always been my approach but when other people (parents, in-laws, whatever) would comment on me not having a gate for the stairs, I just shrugged it off, not wanting to get into a whole disucssion with them b/c I felt that explaining myself would be too complicated. I never articulated WHY I didn’t have a gate — I just didn’t. But now that I read what you wrote, I’m like, “Yeah! Those were my thoughts all along!” But, you can’t exactlly express them in conversation without sounding preachy…

    It is true, I’d rather be a hands-on parent instead of putting up a gate and not dealing with the situation! It was so lovely to read this post!

    Four kids later, we recently moved to FL where the homes are ranches and no longer have the stairs issue….

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