Teaching your child to navigate stairways safely, including staying away from them if they are too young, is a great way to keep them safer inside your house. As child injury attorneys, we want to share a few tips that might help parents keep their children safe. While there is no way to prevent every accident, if you share these tips with caregivers and anyone else who might come in contact with your child, you may reduce the risk that your child will fall down stairs and suffer a serious injury. Children can suffer from broken bones, concussions and worse, they can even die from falling down the stairs. Help avoid this by following these tips.
Use a baby gate at the top and bottom of the stairs if your child is too young to learn to use the stairs safely. Make sure these gates are secure and will not fall if the child pushes or leans on them. Use a gate at the bottom to ensure the child doesn’t crawl partway up and then fall back down.
Once your child is old enough to learn to crawl up stairs and back down, remove the gates only when you are going to be directly supervising your child. Keep both hands on your child as you teach him or her to crawl up stairs and then crawl backwards down the stairs. Teach your child to go down backwards so that if they slip, they will land on their belly with feet going down first. Again, never leave your child unattended on the stairs. When you finish, close the child gates again.
When your child is old enough to walk up and down, never allow them to go without holding your hand. Again, when you are finished navigating the stairs together, close the child gate so they won’t go by herself.
Only remove child gates when you are sure your child has the balance and ability to walk slowly and safely up and down stairs. Encourage them to always use the handrail for balance. Never allow your child to play on stairs.
Contact our child injury lawyers if your child experiences any serious injury.