A dad’s guide to safety on the stairs

Last time I was talking about home hazards when the kids get mobile. They all want to explore and they should, it’s a vital part of learning. One of the first major obstacles to send a cold shiver down the spine of parents is “the stairs”. If you live in a house with stairs, as we do, you’ll know what I mean.

Safety on the stairs is a major concern.

It seems to me that many parents take the wrong approach here and block the stairs – either at the top of bottom – thinking that they will avert the problem. But in truth they only postpone it.

Let me share with you what we did with Nikki when she started crawling. We noticed that when she approached the top of the stairs she would stop naturally, not knowing what to do. I had the idea of slowly turning her around and moving her legs one at a time on to the next stair down. I did this each time I was on the floor with her and she made for the stairs.

Within three days she was able to go to the stairs, turn around and carefully climb down, feet first, on her front.

And she quickly learned to climb up. Problem solved and a new skill learned early and safely. From that point onward our stairs, and importantly stairs in other people’s houses, were no longer a hazard.

So the moral is, don’t mix up keeping children safe with stopping them from learning a skill.

Children generally come to things when they’re ready to do so and gentle encouragement and proper supervision can overcome two problems at once: learning something that enables them to keep themselves safe. Especially while they learn to climb safely on the stairs.

About the author