I have baby gates up at the exit to my bedroom and going into the attached bathroom they stay up 24/7 me dh and dd can all go over them with little difficulty. Works really great for us. Can u put gates up?? If u dont want the gate up all the time u could just put it up at night so that he cant get away like that. I dont like shutting doors because of fire or other things that could happen but the gates work well for us.