Baby gates. Opinions/reality check please!
I decided not to do baby gates back when Chlo first started crawling. I thought it would be better in the long run to focus on correcting and redirecting her than to just block her off from something. After all, at some point the gates won't contain her anymore, right? The only thing she really shouldn't get into is the cat food. I know I COULD put the cat food on the counter......but then that means my cats are invited to hang out on the counter tops.....yuck.
I spend 90% of my time chasing her from the cat food, telling her no, and then putting her where she is allowed to be. For weeks now I have been doing this. I'm going insane!! She understands "no". She knows to stop what she is doing. She does not understand yet that it means don't do it again.
My whole family thinks I'm nuts for taking this approach. I've been told by loads of people that you can't teach a baby stuff like that and I should just get a gate. I'm starting to feel that way.
Am I being a little too optimistic in my efforts to teach her boundaries this early on? I'm on the fence here and I'm not sure if I should hang on to my goal or give it up and buy the stinking gate. Thoughts?
Re: Baby gates. Opinions/reality check please!
I think it's totally your call and up to you to decide how you want to spend your time.
In our house, we had to get a baby gate because we have stairs and it was way too dangerous not to fully block them from the baby. We left the kitchen ungated though and just redirected a ton and it did work. DS rarely just went in there and snooped. Seriously. He only started getting in to the drawers and cupboards in the last two months and he's 2.5 (thank you preschool for teaching him he can do it himself!).
I understand where you are coming from, but in my opinion, you can't always be *right* there where she is. I feel good knowing that DS can't easily fall down the stairs or get into the kitchen cabinets because it took me an extra moment to get to him.
I too am diligent about saying "no, that is the cat's food" and "no, that is the cat's water", "no, we don't touch the cat's food/water". I know he gets what I am saying, but that doesn't stop him from trying!
Gates give me peace of mind that if he is out of my line of sight for a few seconds, he won't get seriously hurt.
Well, my kid ate cat food a couple times. Apparently it's not too bad.
If we had stairs, I'd definitely do gates for safety reasons. Otherwise we just continually told her no and eventually it worked.
I think a lot of it depends on you and your child's temperament.
We introduced gates here and they served as an introductory boundary lesson. Redirection played a HUGE role once the boys learned how to knock down, climb over, or move the gates. We only had them blocking our upstairs hallway which lead to a bathroom and garage. Our oldest figured out how to open doors early on and I feared he would explore his way outside the house so the gates really helped. We have one gate up at this point and it's basically a sound alarm for me as my oldest can easily open and close it.
I think the gates offered our boys much more freedom as they were able to really exlplore our house solo safely once the gates were installed. I knew there was absolutely nothing they could get into and could relax in the chair while they played upstairs or wondered around the house.
I understand where you're coming from. I tried to do the same thing when my son started crawling. After a while, though, I came to a few conclusions.
1. I was saying "no" and "you can't do this, but you can do that" all the time. It was making both of us angry and frustrated, especially since I'm a SAHM....we were dealing with this all.day.long!!! I don't want my son to just hear "no" all the time from me.
2. I was teaching him boundaries in a lot of different ways - so to take away 2 or 3 constant trouble spots and save us all a lot of drama was worth it.
I say, you're just trying to keep her out of one area. Get the baby gate and make life easier for yourself.
I'm dealing with the same thing with the fireplace. I feel like all he is hearing is "no", and there is not really a way to barracade him off from it. It's in our living room, which is where we spend a lot of the time during the day. What about putting the cat food away during the day and put it out at night/during nap? I may be getting some cheapo gates soon, but they will be so the dogs can come back inside.
ETA: what are you cat mommas doing about the litter box? I was missing my kitty big time this morning, but thought that LO would be totally all over the litter box for sure. kitty rocha- yum!
This isn't really an issue for us, fortunately. We only have one bathroom, and it's upstairs, in the master bedroom (yes, very inconvenient for guests!). Anyway, that's where the litter box is. So the only time DS is in there is if he's getting a bath, and we're always with him.
If the litter box were in a different location that was DS-accessible, I would either move it, or get another baby gate that the cats could jump over!
We have a litter box and it's where LO walks by sometimes. It's really not much of an issue for us. We tell him no and move him to another location if he goes to touch it. Most of the time he just wants to pick up the scooper that's next to it and play in the "sand" but he knows he's not supposed to touch it and for the most part he doesn't. Same thing with the cat food and water.
we recycled our puppy gates to keep the dogs out of certain areas when they were puppies .. now they're our baby gates
but for the fact that we cannot watch her 24/7 100% of the time, we have a gate up b/t the back of the couch and the slider when the screen is open so she can't fall through the screen and kiss the concrete patio out back.
We only feed the dog once a day (and when we had cats, they got fed once a day too). The water bowl was more of a 'problem' for us. But I just didn't keep it full, enough for the dog to get some drinks, but not enough to make much of a mess.
in the kitchen, we have/had tot locks on the cabinets with cleaners, glass and the booze. Otherwise he could go in to whatever he wanted.
We had a gate up on one of the entrances to the kitchen, just to limit him to one route in
I'm pretty short and i don't 'clear' the gates so it annoyed me to no end to have gates.
We used to have a white board at the bottom of the stairs and just moved the sofa to block him in upstairs.
When we move, we'll see what we need to do, but overall I say you can do it gate free if you want. Just might need to tweak a few things.
We only feed the dog once a day (and when we had cats, they got fed once a day too). The water bowl was more of a 'problem' for us. But I just didn't keep it full, enough for the dog to get some drinks, but not enough to make much of a mess.
in the kitchen, we have/had tot locks on the cabinets with cleaners, glass and the booze. Otherwise he could go in to whatever he wanted.
We had a gate up on one of the entrances to the kitchen, just to limit him to one route in
I'm pretty short and i don't 'clear' the gates so it annoyed me to no end to have gates.
We used to have a white board at the bottom of the stairs and just moved the sofa to block him in upstairs.
When we move, we'll see what we need to do, but overall I say you can do it gate free if you want. Just might need to tweak a few things.