Comments on: Baby Gear: Baby Gates

By: BeiLeesmom

BeiLeesmom — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:45:07 +0000

We love our First Year hands free gate. It keeps our son in one area and the german shepherd out of his snacks. It is the only gate we have had sturdy enough to contain an 80 pound excitable dog who often leans on it, and also not to fall over after the rather large cat uses it as a springboard.

But we did have one incident where our son realized that if he jumped up and down on the pedal, once he got high enough to exert enough force coming down, the gate popped open. So we monitored him closely for a week and gave him timeouts until he stopped that behavior. All in all, a great gate. And ours is still going strong after two years, so it is worth the price. Susan

By: ziggy

ziggy — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:19:11 +0000

Love our “North States Superyard XT Gate!!!” We have used it over the years to keep our little ones out of the Christmas tree. Some friends of ours have one too that they take to swim meets so their little one has a safe place to play. This gate will also come in handy for puppies and many other ways it you think creatively.

Ziggy
LID 6/6/06

By: ldw4mlo

ldw4mlo — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:25:00 +0000

WE found the gate worked well for sibling and stepmom harmony.

We got a gate for my stepsons room. I the stepmom didn’t have to stress about what tiny items (small legos) and general stuff she could get into and or swallow. I didn’t need to nag him about leaving crud around.

He (at 12) felt he had control over his room. He could choose when to have her in his room and she could visit him through the gate without my worrying or her truly bugging him.

By: cjdbad

cjdbad — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:20:02 +0000

We use the 1st year hands free gates and we absolutely LOVE them!! In addition to the typical safety precautions we decided to limit the rooms and it has made life so much easier. When our sons were younger we had the type of gates that you needed to slide out of the way but the hands free are awesome – I can have my hands full with baby, and misc other items and just step, tap w/my knee and go!! The only thing is – our little one is so smart – she has figured out that you need to step on the pedal to open the gate but since she weighs a whopping 19 lbs we don’t have to worry about her opening it any time soon!! So for now the gates are GREAT – not sure what I will do when she finally is big enough to open it but I guess we will figure that out when the time comes!!

Have a GREAT day!

Connie

By: The Gang

The Gang — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:43:00 +0000

Another interesting point about gates comes from a wise BTDT adoptive mom-friend of mine. In the early days of coming home to us, restricting the area in which the child plays isn’t just about safety. It’s also about helping them adjust to their new surroundings in a “one bite at a time” manner.

They (for the most part) have limited access and movement within their environment before they come home. Think about it: most of us have homes bigger than their previous environments. She suggested the gates to us as a means of helping Li’l Empress adjust from her foster parents’ tiny apartment to our bigger home full of all kinds of new input.

It sure helped us manage the sensory overload issue for her and we expanded the territory a little at a time as we saw her feeling safe and ready to explore more at her own pace.

By: zhaonuer

zhaonuer — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:39:05 +0000

A couple things we are really happy with so far – We used the super wide gate to gate off a corner of the living room that includes a tall book case that would have been difficult to afix to the wall, all our house plants, the gecko, the phone, and cables associated with the wireless router. It is so nice even to be able to drop things like important papers or a camera or laptop on the other side of the gate when we are in a rush to keep them away from the baby. The door in the gate works well so we can still feed the gecko and water plants without much trouble. Plus it is not completely unattractive in our decor.

At the bottom of the stairs we used a soft retractable gate and are VERY happy with that decision. In the cramped townhouse it would be inconvenient to swing a gate out of the way constantly. Plus we only need to gate off the bottom of the stairs on occasion if we are cooking dinner or something. The gate is certainly not toddler proof, but it is still a deterent – especially for crawling babies. All of our gates are hardware mounted.