A gate that protects the baby, but lets the 4-year-old out?

[Lula's Mom]

So in my house, we have stairs that go upstairs to the bedrooms, and downstairs to Lula's basement playroom. Both of these stairs are open, no doors to close them off. And yet, the stairs are around a corner from the kitchen, where we often are, so my 6-month-old could get there quickly and unseen by me.

Marcos crawls like crazy- he is fast. And he loves his sister, who is usually downstairs in her playroom, so it's only a matter of time before he goes looking for her and I don't know it in time to get him!

Is there a gate that can keep him from falling down the stairs, but that my 4-year-old can operate easily? I don't really know much about the kinds of gates out there... with Lula, we lived in a different house, and it was easy to see if she headed for the stairs. I never put a gate up there, because I let her practice climbing stairs, and she got very good at it at it very early on. But I was always with her. I know Marcos will escape me at some point in this house!

[jake&zaxmom]

not sure about which gate to use because my 5 yo just climbs over ours :

but a problem that you might run into is that the 4 yo might not remember to securely latch the gate after herself and/or the baby being at the gate when she is and *forcing* his way through. I know that with my 5 yo I had to put door knob covers that wouldn't allow him to open some door because his little brother was right there with him and his reaction was to slam the door hard to try and keep the little one out. A couple of smashed fingers later, I had to limit the 5 yo access to those doors.

[rgarlough]

Try doing a search for the Evenflo Simple Touch Gate. Its battery operated and works like a garage door with a separate 'opener' that is mounted higher than the infant can raach.

I have no experience with it directly, but I ran across it when I was shopping for gates.

[Lula's Mom]

Thanks, both of you! It's true- it is possible that Lula could forget, but she's really good about this kind of thing (she's always telling everyone to "Close the door! Mosquitoes are going to get in!" :LOL ) I'd probably only have to remind her once or twice before she got in the habit. And she is obsessive about Marcos' safety, so she would keep it closed if he was trying to go in too.

I will do a search for that gate! Anyone else?

[faythe]

We just got an auto-closing gate:

http://www.lababyco.com/gates.htm go down to AUTOMATIC METAL SWING CLOSED SAFETY GATE (#SG03 A)

The 4yo's have a bedroom upstairs but most of the toys, the living area and dd 3 & 4 are downstairs. We use it at the bottom of the stairs going up. We found ours at Babies R Us, and it was worth it.

Before we had this the girls would forget to latch the gate, or think it was latched but it wasn't. Dd4 would toddle over and be halfway up the stairs in a blink of the eye.

Our particular model has a two-step mechanism - you have to slide back a latch with your finger or thumb and then lift the gate door an inch or so to open it. Dh figured out that if the gate wasn't tightly installed that you could bypass the latch, so that's what we did. It's still tight enough in the doorway that dd3 or 4 can pull on it and shake it without moving it.

I wouldn't be comfortable putting this at the top of a stairway. I'd get a gate designed specificaly for that and explain to your dd that she will have to ask you to open the gate to the basement until her brother is bigger and better on stairs.