At what age to baby gates not work?

I have a few carpenter made gates that we use to shut-off our bathroom, front door and office (on our main floor), but the gates aren't as sturdy as I would like and the kids are shaking them a bit, so I am wondering how much longer they will last. So, I am wondering if it is worth investing in a few more gates (store bought ones which are stronger) to gate off those areas - or are the kids going to figure out how to open the gates/climb over them in the near future anyway?
What do you use to keep them out of areas they shouldn't be in if you don't use gates?...

 

Instead of gates how about using door locks esp. for the front door and bathroom? I have lever doors so it's easy for them to open.

Now if you want to completly block off an area, you may have to invest in gates that get screwed into the studs of the wall. I have those for my stairs and there is no way they could move them.

Last but not least, you could try redirecting them away from the areas you don't want them in. That will take the most work but won't cost you any money. :lol:

 

I'm not sure when they stop working...we have a gate in our living room and our two will shut it for us but they also know how to open when they really want something, for example, I was upstairs brushing my teeth when out of the corner of my eye I saw DS walking down the steps. For the most part I redirect them and that is working for us right now but they also don't fuss with the gate too often.

 

We never ended up putting up gates. Basically, they stayed where I was, and rarely explored areas of the house they shouldn't. Places like bathrooms, we just kept the doors closed. You can teach them to stay out--it really does work. I found that the less something is made inaccessible, the more they don't bother with it.

 

Gates didn't make it to age 2 for us; they just climbed over at will. They have short legs but would put the metal poles between the first and second toe and walk their feet up until they could get a knee over. I left a couple of the gates up because it slowed them down a bit, at least... but shortly after turning 2, they learned to work the "childproof" latch and their "must explore everything forbidden now that we can" period was an extremely difficult time.

Anyway, if you've observed any attempts to climb over, I'd gradually start getting them used to not having gates. Going cold turkey isn't fun. Knob covers didn't work at all for us but I am still able to lock doors to some rooms and just use the pick keys that I've placed on the door jambs above all doors that can lock.

ETA: the pick thing may not work for much longer since they've learned that the key will fall if you shut the door hard and I've caught them trying to use the pick key. It's a never-ending battle!

 

I agree with this completely.

 

We have the tall walk through gates made by Summer from BRU, they are AWESOME! We have one blocking off our kitchen, and one in our hall blocking off the bedrooms and bathrooms. However, now we got a puppy and we want to put a doggy door in the utility room, I have no clue what we are going to do.

 

Mine never climbed the gates, ever. Actually, if I still had them up it would probably still keep them out of the room.

We just kept doors closed to rooms we didn't want them in. Eventually they figure out how to open the doors, so for rooms we really didn't want them in we put the doorknob childproof things on. Bathrooms, well eventually you do want them to go in those and use them. Mine were "play in the toilet" kids either. They do love to go in there and wash their hands though.