Rec your baby gate please! (and stairs question)

MrsJuneHawk

Liev has discovered the stair and is lightning fast!  Since yesterday I have caught him halfway up the stairs three times.  He has no problem going up but obviously does not know how to come back down.

Anyhow, we NEED a gate now and would love some recs.

One a side note, I know some of you have taught your kids how to go back down the stairs, and although we don't plan to let him go up and unsupervised, we do realize we'll have to teach him at some point.  How, and when, do you teach a kid how to go down the stairs

trapani2be

Our stairs have been gated since ds could crawl, and I have only now started to teach him how to come down the stairs because honestly I was scared.  They are hardwood and slippery.  We taught him to get down off the couch, bed etc by telling him bum first and sliding him on his tummy.  I tried it with the stairs and he has really caught on. He goes down just like he crawls up, scooting down on his bum did not work because he kept standing up and trying to walk down.  Good luck, I hate stairs they freak me out. 

Oh, we have the Evenflo Soft & Wide gate at the bottom of the stairs it adjusts in size so we use it in other spots too.

kgb1411

we taught DS to go up and down the stairs as soon as he started crawling.  (actually my dad did this because he thought it was funny)...so about 8-9 months old.  He goes backward on his tummy, and can go down the carpeted stairs faster than we can now. 

We stopped gating the stairs about a month ago when I was about 7 months pregnant and realized that I was more likely to fall carrying DS than he was to fall going down on his own. 

Before that, we had a pressure mounted gate with a spindle attachment for the banister at the bottom of the stairs and a gate that screwed into the wall at the top of the stairs.  We found both on Amazon.