The phrase “locking in” always feels unnecessarily divisive in these conversations. For numerous safety reasons (fire, injury) we don’t let our toddler just wander the house freely at night. It’s not like there are chains on the door, it’s a door knob cover on the inside. Letting a toddler roam your home unsupervised does not seem more responsible.
Exactly this. People who are vocally against "locking kids in their rooms" on reddit act like maniacal parents are shoving their kids in their rooms at night, locking the door, and laughing all the way to bed, ignoring their child's pleas for assistance during the night.
Like, nah, I'm locking my toddler in his room because if he decides to quietly leave and roam the house and by some miracle I don't wake up to the sound of my child thinking too loudly from 30 feet away, he could get seriously hurt. And also if there were an emergency, I'd want to be 100% sure of where he was. I still go in when he calls for me and will check in if he's screaming about something. He was effectively locked in his room when he was in a crib, and people are generally fine with cribs.
A non parent tried to shame a toddler parent in a thread when they mentioned having a child safety lock on the pantry. They were like, that’s horrible to lock up the food from your child. As if they were starving the child because they don’t want a toddler dumping all of the cereal on the floor. People have a similar reaction to putting a child lock on a toddler’s door. They react to it as if it’s an older child being locked out of a pantry or in a room. It’s weird that they don’t understand the difference.
Lol these people do NOT understand toddlers. I once had to cut my kid off at the 6th baby bel cheese. She absolutely would have eaten that entire Costco bag in one sitting and then not pooped for 2 weeks.
Lol totally unrelated to door locks... My kid is the "eat an entire box of strawberries for breakfast" kid. My MIL thought it was hilarious. Regardless of how much I warned against it, she would give him as much as he wanted every time she would visit. I finally told her she was welcome to continue but she would also be in charge of all the acid poop blow-outs, laundry, diaper rash treatment, and soothing to sleep for the next 3 days. She got the message and finally stopped.
Growing up, if we didn’t lock everything, my youngest brother (he’s on the non-verbal end of the autism spectrum). I remember one morning we woke up to raw eggs all over the kitchen with a bunch of salt and pepper dumped on them. Then in the living room he flung steak sauce and ketchup on the ceiling. Mom made all of us help clean it and I remember it just taking forever. The steak sauce stains are still there to this day.
And not only that, but he learned how to unlock keyless locks thanks to his school. We learned that when he escaped the house and ran out to the road. Took a little while to figure out that it wasn’t just mom one of us being careless. Thankfully he was always found quickly by a neighbor and after that dad flipped all the door knobs so that you had to have a key to get out. It was an interesting time.
My step daughter is on the nonverbal end of the spectrum and has done BOTH of those things. 🫠 she is past that period now but has been replaced by my 1 year old. The locks are coming back. Gotta do what you gotta do!
Absolutely. Their safety is worth way more than judgement from others. CPS was thrown off by the flipped locks (a teacher called them a couple times after mom and dad complained about the school teaching how to unlock everything without notifying them) but even they ultimately agreed it was best once mom and dad explained why. Same thing with the locks on the pantry, though they were a bit more familiar with that one. No problems as long as kiddo still eats and is healthy.
He’s in his 20s now and obviously allowed access to everything again and can even cook some basic stuff. We all still laugh about the sauce stains on the ceiling. Due to being nonverbal he’s probably always going to have to live with someone, but he’s really smart and rarely any trouble these days.
That’s awesome! Our kiddo is definitely going to have to live with supervision for life but at this point she doesn’t get into anything or try to escape. She won’t even come out of her room unless we tell her to. We moved last year and I’m not sure she realizes she CAN come out, and that we only shut the door to keep the toddler out. We had to chain the inside of the doors at the old house to keep her in the house when she was little because she would totally just run outside when nobody was looking. The doors were so jenky they could be pulled open even when locked with the deadbolt. 😵💫 Fortunately we lived in a rural area so tucked in that even when we directed people to our house they couldn’t find it! So no fear of traffic, and the property was fenced completely so she couldn’t go get lost in the woods! I think as knowledge grows people as a whole are becoming more understanding of the lengths we have to go to for safety as parents of special needs kids!
I use a pantry lock because I was tired of wrestling spices out of a running toddler’s hand. He can have food wherever he wants and has his own shelf, but that doesn’t stop him from grabbing off others within his reach.
I also use a leash because he wants to touch driving cars.
I’m their worst nightmare 😂
Until you’ve personally had a runner you shouldn’t say anything about a safety tether. My friend had a little guy like this. He had very few words but one of them was “go!”. He was just always trying to run away.
I laugh when people give me judgement about our "backpack and tether" - I don't give a rats arse if you disagree with me on the use of this. My kiddo is SAFE, they are not bothering YOU, and they have the freedom they are asking for (the kiddo is under 2 and doesn't have the capacity to understand you need to hold my hand or not run crazy through crowds).
Seriously. I don't know how many snide comments I have received from people about my son's backpack leash. I told a guy once that he confused me for someone that thought his opinion mattered. He did not appreciate my response.
I’m dreading the day my toddler realizes he can climb the pantry shelves. I have a latch on the door - but I also have an 8 year old that would forget she has a head if it wasn’t attached to her neck and constantly talking- so she definitely forgets to close and latch doors.
This is exactly my thinking.
My kid gets into absolutely everything, will climb anything possible including multilevel cat towers, will stand on the dining room chairs and then fall backwards off them, etc etc.
He can open his door anytime he likes, but we've put a baby gate across it for good measure and always have the monitor nearby.
If anything did happen I would much rather know exactly where he is rather than searching for a hide and seek king who could be hurt, or scared or any number of things.
Exactly. It’s just like a much larger crib. It’s not a punishment, it’s for their own safety and security.
When our daughter got a little bigger we took the knob cover off and it was a nightmare. She stopped sleeping though the night, always coming out of her room, crying, etc. We put the knob back on out of desperation and within 2 nights she was back to her normal self sleeping like a rock. **She needed that boundary** to feel safe and secure.
When she got a little bigger we took it off and she was fine.
Exactly. We have had a nanny cam in our child's room since birth. We were constantly looking at it but it's not fool proof either.
My kid is 5 now and we no longer limit his movement in the house because he understands that bedtime means that he is supposed to stay in his room unless he's using the bathroom. And before that we used baby gates to allow access to the bathroom but not the rest of the house. We learned the hard way that limiting his movement at nap/bedtime was necessary.
During COVID my husband was working from home and my little one was supposed to be napping. I left the house to run an errand and left my husband in charge of the baby monitor. About 20 minutes later I got a notification on our front door Ring Cam and luckily I checked to see what it was because there goes our 2 year old out the front door. Everything was fine but there are many scenarios where it might not have been.
Exactly. I have a doorknob cover in my girls’ room because I live in an old house with a steep staircase that I can’t gate off. I do not want them to get out of their room and fall down the stairs at 3 AM. It’s a safety issue.
Exactly this. I have fallen down my "quaint" 120-year old stairs, delivery people have fallen down them, I am not going to allow my child the chance to very seriously injure themselves in the middle of the night.
Exactly. My almost 4yo is trustworthy *enough* for me to take a quick shower or go to the bathroom with the door open or run the trash can up to the road really quick.... But I don't want her roaming around the house all night while we are asleep. She could get into any manner of nonsense if she was bored and had run of the house and knew we didn't have eyes on her.
I forgot to lock the trash can earlier and went upstairs to get my kids some socks so we could go outside. In the 2 minutes I was upstairs, my kids (for the first time ever!) took trash out of the trash can, including a paper towel full of old coffee grounds and then smeared the coffee grounds all over the kitchen floor. People do not understand how quickly accidents or purposeful messes can happen.
Ok, I only have a 1.5yo, so I'm here learning the ropes, but I had no idea people lock their trash cans. Knowing my son, it seems inevitable that I'll have to do it too when the time comes.
We lock ours not to stop our toddler from taking stuff out of the trash, but to stop her from putting stuff in! She will put all her toys and our phones and keys and anything she can find in the trash lol
We took it off when ours hit a bit after 3 and was day time potty trained. Though they are still not night time potty trained which is just based on hormones and not something I can teach. So if they need to pee at 2am? They are just going in their diaper anyway as they won't even wake up and realize they need to pee.
I don't go to bed till well after they are sleeping. So if they need to potty after being tucked in they just kinda yell and we heard them both bc of where the room is and the monitor. We also would go in anytime they called which sometimes was literally dozens of times in one evening.
Still better than them getting into something they shouldn't at 3am wondering around. Or not knowing where they are in case of a fire.
What's funny is my first kid never had an issue...never had to to use the door cover...but my second? Oh man. Her safety is at risk if she was not contained.
When our older kid started waking up at night to go potty, she'd knock on the door or call out that she needed to go potty. We took the doorknob cover off at that point. She was 3 then. My son is 2.5, so whenever he starts waking up to go potty at night, we'll take the doorknob cover off his door too.
Agreed, we also use a know cover. My toddler's room is been thoroughly child-proofed and is the safest place for him to be alone sleeping and in the moments he wakes up and I'm not there yet. I'm not saying the rest of my home isn't childproof, but I think most people on this thread would agree that a determined toddler would surely find the things I've missed if he was free to wander around at night.
I have a gate that blocks toddler from going further than a few meters into the hallway it's the best of both worlds, he has the autonomy to leave his room but is not wondering around the house at night.
I cosleep with my kid and I "lock" us inside. I just don't want him getting out while no one is awake and potentially getting hurt. Our entire house top to bottom isn't child proofed (nor should it have to be).
Yep I agree with this 100%. We put a baby gate across the outside of his door. This is the safest thing for him. He’s a sleep walker and I don’t even want to know what kind of mischief an unconscious toddler could get into with free rein of the house. 😱
For safety I always have the baby monitor on with sound up. Also he can open his door and yell out to us if he needs to, but he doesn’t. I also have a very loud and clear fire alarm in his room and in the hallway.
I don’t lock my toddler in his room because he is still in his crib but I do have one of those pop up child proofing levers on his door handle and I will have that active when I move him to a toddler bed.
This is because in the event of an emergency like a fire he would not be able to safely evacuate himself. He is two years old. I feel he is safer being in a known location than wandering our house loose in case of emergency.
I also don’t think two year olds are old enough to be unsupervised for more than a couple of minutes. If he was free to leave his room at night when I’m asleep then he would be essentially unsupervised for hours having free reign of the house.
In his childproof bedroom he is safe.
Yep - just transitioned my 22 month old to his toddler bed and have one of these. I felt a bit weird at first locking him in, but honestly, it’s the same as a baby gate. We have the monitor and another camera to see the whole room so we can keep an eye on him.
For his safety and our sanity, this keeps him contained in an area where he is safe and I can see what he’s doing. And to your point - he is in one location in case we need to get to him.
Gosh, I know it's a height thing, but 22 months sounds SO EARLY. We JUST moved our girl to toddler bed at nearly 3. She's tormenting us now, we might have to lock her in her room. She comes downstairs and gets in bed with us, sometimes it's sweet and cuddly, usually it's her needing something that makes no sense at 4am and kicking me.
Yes he’s right at the crib height limit and I’m due with his brother in 6 weeks so I wanted to get through this before the new baby comes lol
He never tried to climb out and so far he hasn’t gotten out of his bed at all so we will see how it goes lol
Exactly! I didn’t lock them in but I did have a knob lock on the inside of their doorknobs. It kept them from escaping and getting in to things like cat food (this was an issue). Unfortunately they both learned to open them before they were three but by that time they’d grown out of eating the cat food and would come wake us up.
My 2 year old gets “locked in” via a childproofing device on the outside of the door. So I can get in but he can’t get out. I still use a monitor with sound and video and attend to him the same as always, but once we transitioned out of the crib I didn’t feel it was safe for him to potentially get out of bed and wander the house without me knowing. It’s purely for safety and nothing more. I don’t really see how it’s different than them being “locked” in a crib where they also cannot get out without assistance. If anything, being in the toddler bed with the ability to roam their room, but not leave their room, is more freedom than when they were just in the crib.
I’m shocked that this is controversial. Maybe for a child sure, but a toddler roaming free without supervision is a major safety issue in my opinion.
We have one of those child proof knob covers just because I don’t QUITE trust her yet to not go wandering around in the middle of the night. She has a little potty in her bedroom. She’ll be 4 in October. We have a gate at the stairs and child proof locks on the bathroom cabinets so I think I’ll be removing it when she turns 4. I think it all depends on your setup, your trust that your child will stay in their room and your overall comfort level.
I was wondering about the potty situation once they are potty trained!
We’re still in crib/diapers but our upstairs is definitely not safe for a roaming toddler. We can’t put a gate at the top of the stairs due to the layout and they are steep high stairs.
Potty in the room is a good idea if they have to go.
Rather than considering it locking in I would look at it as turning their room in to one giant crib. We did a knob cover and transition to a bed for my toddler when he started climbing out of his crib.
Same here! My guy climbed out of his crib really early (like he wasn’t even 18 months yet) but he already knew how to open doors. No way was I letting my tiny not even one and a half year old out to wander in the house all night. It’s mostly baby proofed but not to the extent he can be wandering all night alone. I put (safe) toys in his room and a whole bunch of books and baby proofed his room until there wasn’t a single thing he could get into. Now at 21 months he’s happy to just play in his room when he’s up and will bang in the door when he wants out. It’s also nice knowing in an emergency I know exactly where he is at night if he for whatever reason wasn’t sleeping
This. Smoke inhalation is usually what kills people in a house fire. Not burns. If a child hides they might not be found before they die of smoke inhalation.
Our local fire department recommends toddlers be locked in their room at night. In the case of a fire or other emergency, you know exactly where they are. A child will be scared in a fire and could hide from firefighters.
Yes. Firefighter are trained to get in locked rooms where kids are. I am a big fan of the slide lock in the top that can be accessed by adults from both sides.
I know it's maybe unreasonable and anxiety/trauma driven but I just need to know with certainty where my kid is at night! So while I'm super pro independence on like every other front we do have a knob protector on his door so he can't open it. I'd just have a baby gate at the top of the stairs (all bedrooms are on the 2nd floor) but it doesn't work for our cats.
He's not good at knobs and ours are pretty stiff so I'm not even sure he could open his door without it. He has never complained and doesn't try to get through it. I have a baby monitor for his room so we know when he needs us!
The way you word it you make it sound so abusive lol. Small children can’t be trusted to have free unsupervised roam of the house at night. Plus in the event of a fire it’s safer to have the door closed. I don’t lock my daughter in, I just close the door.
Unrelated to sleep training for us. My kids lacked the impulse control to be allowed to roam around when they switched from a crib to a bed (both were under 2 when they switched to beds) and I was worried they would get into trouble on their own or hide somewhere during an emergency. Once my older kid started waking up at night to go potty (around 3), we took the lock off and just had a baby gate at the top of the stairs. My younger one is 2.5 and we'll do the same for him. I don't lock them away as a punishment or to cry alone. It's a safety measure.
We don't lock the door but we do close it.
Closed doors are so so important for fire safety. It slows down the spread of smoke and can make a huge difference for how fast a fire spreads. Two-fold here, I also know where he should be in an emergency.
If he does get out though we have another door that separates the bedrooms from the rest of the house so he will be in our room if not his (he will knock on our door).
I saw someone say their pediatrician compared it to a crib. When they’re in a crib they can’t roam the house and you know where they are, and locking the door ensures the same thing.
We’ve never locked him in his room. He’s been in a floor bed since he was 18 months, he’s 3.5 now. When he wakes up at night, he immediately comes to our room. He’s never wandered the house or anything.
My nephew on the other hand walked out the front door multiple times, so they put a lock on the front door.
We’ve always had a toddler lock thing on our front door, but never his bedroom.
Same here. Our son is almost 3.5, been in floor bed since 18 months. Whenever he wakes at night the only thing he has ever done is call for us and now that he’s older he just comes right to our room. He also entertains himself, gets snacks, watches a show while I shower and get ready in the morning.
But, we have a one year old daughter. She is still in her pack n play but I have this gut feeling that she will not be the same way and we may be on the child proofing , door locking side of this convo. Time will tell lol
We use a child proof knob cover on the inside. He kept getting into stuff when we didn't have it on and it's impossible to fully child proof our entire house.
Do you lock your toddler in the house at night? If so, why? Because you don’t want them wandering outside into an unsafe situation? Same idea for “locking” them into their room. The house is not completely safe for a toddler to roam for hours if she were to wake up and get out in the middle of the night.
I was absolutely against this until my two year old got up at 3am, walked OUT THE FRONT DOOR, got the two pet piglets (both about 40kg by that point) out of their pen and bought them into the house for a little pig party.
I could hear banging and thumping and I came out to find him in the living room, front door wide open, with two pigs going crazy while he scattered handfuls of potato chips around the place (and attempting to ride them)
We lock the door now.
I was in SHOCK. It was so bizarre! He wasn’t even scared to march out in the middle of the night? We are rural too so it is dark!!
Just realised I should add pig tax
I always leave a path to the parents’ bedroom and lock the kitchen, nothing interesting is in the dark corridor, so my son goes straight to us if he wants something.
It depends greatly on your layout, like if you have a ladder in your house, you probably don’t want a toddler to go there at the middle of the night. Baby monitor is a good solution, which lets you lock the baby’s room and wake up if something is happening.
We don’t restrain him to his room but we baby gate off the rest of the house so he can only go from his room down the hall to our room also. We have a baby monitor.
I’m not comfortable keeping him in his room (or any confined space alone) when he’s scared and doesn’t want to be there. Personally, the idea turns my stomach and I have friends who do this but it’s not something I’m comfortable with at all. The layout of our house allows him to safely go from his room to ours without accessing the rest of the house.
Under the age of 5 it is not safe for them to have access to the full house when unsupervised. I think at 5 most understand danger and rules enough maybe? Not sure why that is the recommendation honestly. But my 3 year old is likely to try to turn on the tub herself because she LOVES water and swimming. And we wouldn’t know if we were sleeping.
But also fire safety. 1. If they open the door, fire spreads faster. And 2. If a fire occurs, an adult or firefighter knows exactly where to find them to rescue them. With access to the house, they might get scared and hide somewhere obscure, which can have deadly consequences.
Child safety locks are my first line of defense, and if that fails to work before he can safely have free roam of the house I would absolutely flip the knob and lock him in.
First is that he doesn't understand all the safety stuff of having free roam of the house. It's not just snacks and food he shouldn't get into, but accidental drowning in the tub if he got into the bathroom, falling down the steps in the dark and breaking a bone or a concussion, managing to turn the stove on, and even leaving the house are all risks of a small child having unfettered unmanaged unsupervised access to the whole home.
Second is it's a fire risk. In the case of a fire you don't want a small child huddled behind a couch or behind a curtain. They are less likely to be found. By shutting them in their room and making the door inaccessible for them to open, you and the first responders know they're in their room and can find them quicker. This reduces the chances of bodily harm or death by fire. And also in regards to fire safety, a shut door slows down the path of a fire. Whole rooms can remain untouched because of a shut door. This increases the chances of your child surviving unharmed and gives first responders a longer time to access the room snd your child with less risk to everyone involved. Fire follows oxygen, and the shut door reduces the air flow between between rooms so it can't rush into that room.
My son just turned three, we have a doorknob cover on his door. Itʻs just plain not safe for him to have access to the rest of the house while weʻre sleeping. We have a monitor, when he wakes up he calls for us and we get right up and get him.
Locked.
Mainly because we have stairs she loves to (dangerously) play on and worry she'd climb the stairs gate.
Her room is the most baby-proofed and next to ours so we can hear if she needs help.
She'd also probably terrorize the dog (her "best friend").
I don’t lock the door because they haven’t attempted to open it. They don’t leave their beds at night or nap time. They will play with a toy or read a book in bed and wait for me. I didn’t train them to do this but I hope it lasts lol.
But.. if they do try to open the door, I will have to consider locking. I don’t think it’s safe for two 3 year olds wandering the house.
Maybe I’m an outlier but my daughter never leaves her bed, her style is more “wake up and yell” - we close her door almost all the way but don’t click it and she has never come out… she’s now 3.5 in a twin bed. We also sit by her bed until she falls asleep.
I used to lock the door but then one day my husband put up a baby gate so now they can open and close the door freely but the baby gate is there to keep them to their room.
We only lock it when we go to bed ourselves. If we’re up and about we can walk her back to bed, but she still wakes in the night and our house is one floor. She’s got the video monitor, her own potty, and calls for me if she’s not feeling well. She’s 3.5
It’s controversial because some parents lock the child in their room and ignore their pleas to come out. They sob on the other side of the door and the parents ignore them until morning. Pretty disgusting and negligent.
We use a gate on the outside of the door and obviously a monitor. Door stays closed to keep the cat out and keep the room temp controlled. We never ignore our LO if she calls out or cries!!!
We chose not to because I wanted to instill early on that no matter what time it is you can always come get us if you need us. We also kept the camera in the room for a while so if he got up or needed something we would know, but he also was allowed to come into our room if he felt he needed to. All of our external doors are locked with chain locks at the top at night so I’m not concerned about him escaping and I guess maybe I’ve just been lucky that he’s not interested in roaming the house (except when I didn’t hide the Christmas presents well enough and he decided to open them a week early).
Exactly this. My oldest is a spicy temperament and we realized very quickly that traditional sleep training was very stressful for her so we have always been responsive when she needed us in the night and we’ve never regretted that as our general approach. Now that she is older, when she needs us in the night (not frequently), I want her to know she can come get us. I remember going to my moms side of the bed and asking her to come lay with me when I had a nightmare. I would have been so sad to be locked in my room. Thankfully, my mischievous and strong willed 3.5 year old has not been roaming the house and maybe if she did we would change our plans. We do have the stairs to downstairs with a baby gate so she doesn’t like sleep walk down the stairs or something so it’s not like she has free rein, but it’s very important to us that she can get to us.
Question for those who do secure the toddler's bedroom: what do you use if you have door handles instead of knobs?
My kiddo is strong. We tried a thing that is supposed to prevent the handle from turning - she just put her weight into it and snapped it off.
They make childproof hinge locks that go on the top hinge of the door, not the doorknob. In your case, a baby gate in front of the door might work better/be cheaper and easier and then just make sure the door is shut before you go to bed. If she can hop the gate .... best of luck to you haha
Use one of these, they are tough.
https://www.amazon.com/Improved-Childproof-Prevents-Toddlers-Operation/dp/B07RVGYRL6/ref=mp_s_a_1_14?crid=3KWU6WYE0I5IT&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.km5nVDgN7dkezj3zuMqTJPUQa2Rf2aN9unZ96PqAI2FQN4MA-OUVrSzBZRieabqUHjnY8aSXSkaE6cME2WBxDGSaVEv_Hn428NSacl95RBnZdvqMqje0pW-bowc8AA5yV3IJeDWnKQPdTiNEfzuo19d6Vrucs7iaZ6uxuCNLw0-WWWBvlm_Ykj1R57E65YEemwrKmZDioyV2yb7YKWnPlQ.6EeyINj_wkbVwofLILt0dfEacmoaAns0Y22PcgxLDKM&dib_tag=se&keywords=handle+lock+baby+proofing&qid=1720574478&sprefix=handle+lock+baby+proofing%2Caps%2C132&sr=8-14
We definitely do. We don’t lock it but he can’t open the door so basically the same thing. It’s not safe for him to be able to be able to walk around at night with us asleep and frankly he’s never go to sleep if he would just get up and walk out.
I had one on my son’s door from 2.5-4. I was paranoid about him getting out of the house or wandering around while I was sleeping. I had a camera in there that alerted me to movement and sound.
My 3 year old has a childproof cover on the knob inside his room. A child who is too young to reliably evacuate in a smoky, loud emergency is a child who is too young to have access to the home at night. We have a baby monitor and he is aware he can ask for help if he needs us. Sometimes that's because he's sick or scared, sometimes it's because his toenail is too long or he doesn't want to get out of bed to get his teddy bear on the floor. 🤣
He's at the stage where he sometimes will get up to pee at night, sometimes not, so he wears an overnight pull-up but his potty is in his room. I had been apprehensive about this but it's been a total non-issue.
I need to sleep at some point, and given the style and layout of our house and what my daughter (autistic and now 7yo) has proven capable of there's no safe way to make it so she can be let out unsupervised. When started this practice as soon as she figured out how to climb out of her crib and broke the METAL store bought baby gates we were using, when she was 2yo. We had to replace all the safety gates we use with goat doors like you'd find in a barn, and then make adjustments as she learned to vault over them.
My situation is somewhat unique, I have a baby gate in the hallway so my kiddo can be in his room or mine and that's all. I'm not sure what I would do in a different house layout.
I sometimes lock my kids in at bedtime if they are being silly and won’t listen and stay in bed. I unlock before going to bed myself, because they are consistently good at staying in bed until morning once asleep. But if I had any concerns about them trying to go outside or something, I would keep it locked. Better locked in than getting out by accident. My younger sister got out multiple times in her toddlerhood, once when she was supposed to be napping and she got across a busy street by herself.
We have a baby gate in our 4 year old’s doorway because he’s escaped the house twice. We chose a gate instead of locking the door so that he can still communicate with us if he needs something. (Our house has a strange setup.) I honestly don’t know when we’re going to feel comfortable leaving the gate open at night. The kid is fearless.
We locked our toddler in (with a child proof handle) until she was nighttime potty trained. She's 3.5 now and isn't locked in her room only because 1) the only place she goes when she wakes up is our room or the bathroom and 2) she very rarely wakes up as it is. 3) She also figured out the childproof know so unless we want to go out and buy a new doorknob with a literal lock on it we have no other option left 😂
In the event of the an emergency it's safer for your toddler to be in their room where you know they are and not wandering the house where you can't find them.
My kiddo didn't move to her own room until she was 2. We didn't lock her in, she had a floor bed. But she refused to leave her bed without us present, let alone her room. We also set her door up to alert us if it opened and had a baby camera that alerted us to movement or sound.
She's 4.5 now and still wants the camera. If she has been more willing to leave her room without us, we'd have done a baby gate
Our toddler is currently in our bed, but even when he was in his room we had a baby proof door knob cover on. We also have a cover on our bedroom door.
Not to “lock him in” but just to make sure he wouldn’t get out and wander overnight. Our house is like 99.9% kid proofed but it only takes ten seconds for him to try to find the one thing I overlooked.
We never LOCKED for safety reasons. We used door knob protectors also for safety reasons but always have baby monitors on in case they call for us. Now I leave their doors open but that’s because I know their habits and it allows them to come to my bed if they need me
I don’t do it. My 3 year old comes in our bed every night and I would love him to stay in his own but not enough to lock him in. It feels Victorian and I can’t bear the thought of him feeling scared or lonely and not being able to come for a cuddle.
There are a million ways my 2.5 yr old could kill himself if he wandered our house at night from turning on the stove or oven to unlocking the front door and walking out to climbing furniture and falling. If he needs something, he tells us through the monitor. We don't have a lock on his door but we have a gate that he cannot open in the door frame.
I hadn’t given this a thought since my daughter still sleeps in the room with us. My initial thought at the caption my gut feeling was HELL NO.
But after reading the comments it makes total sense to do so and it’s the safest thing to do. 100% i will be doing this when she is ready to transition to her own room.
literally my thought process lmao. first reaction was like hell no that sounds abusive and then after reading i’m like this is literally common sense and why wouldn’t a parent do this
We put one of those door knob childproof covers on my son’s door once he moved into his big bed (he went from a crib to toddler bed to twin in quick succession). He realized he could open the door and it was becoming fun at about 2 AM. We just didn’t want him wandering in the house at night; knowing where he (and our dog is) is important to me incase of an emergency.
When we did this, we had a talk with him about calling for mommy or daddy, instead of opening the door by himself. And he does. However mornings, if I’m too slow to come get him when he’s calling for me, he’ll climb out of bed and shake the ever living heck out of his door and subsequently the house.
It's the safest thing to do until they can be trusted to not do something dumb, or know what to do in an emergency.
Our 4yo still has a doorknob cover. We don't even trust him to go to the bathroom alone at night without doing something dumb.
honestly I don’t , but I don’t judge people who do. We just got lucky with our kid , if he does come out his room it’s always straight to us even now at 4. he just doesn’t enjoy being alone . so we never had felt the need to lock it. If a fire alarm or anything goes off he such a heavy sleeper we usually get to him first before he even realizes .
now my nephew is 5, And he is autistic and will often elope . when he is here for sleepovers and when he is at his own home ,we do lock the bedroom door , he has escaped many times his own home and I won’t let it happen on my watch. So I always say.
It’s what works for your family and child .
Everyone is going to do what is best for their child personally. For example, I had to sleep train my baby because the situation only escalated if I ever entered her room and tried to soothe her (in a situation where she is already fed and changed). The reason is because she would be mad she couldn’t sleep- the crying was a matter of frustration, and to this very day, me bothering her STILL frustrates her further tenfold and I must let her have space and settle on her own. I never like doing this, and it drives my mom instinct insane, but it took a lot of trial and error over the course of a very long period of time to learn it’s the best way. I think I would feel the same way about locking her in her room. I would hate it, but if necessary for my daughter to not be sleep deprived, I would do it.
In my current situation my 4 year old is good about staying in her room - it’s far more likely for me that locking her in will prevent her from escaping in an emergency than it is for her to cause one, so because of that personal likelihood in my house I don’t do it. Plus she is potty trained so she needs access to the bathroom.
We do not lock our doors because we do not have a toddler who regularly leaves, but we do have a toddler who occasionally has a nightmare and comes fleeing from her room but cannot seem to find us at night. Unfortunately that puts her path of travel riiiight in front our stairs so to stop accidentally falling, we baby gate the top of the stairs and she can't open it. But genuinely, my biggest fear is that one of our children will just wander their way outside. Would much rather our children learn to call for us than worry about how they are doing all night.
Up until a year or so ago (4yr old), we had a baby gate on the entrance to her room. Because we could not put a baby gate at the top of the stairs (our stairs are awkward) and I wasn't risking her falling down the stairs in the middle of the night.
She's had it off a while now and only wanders to the bathroom or our room in the middle of the night.
It’s actually a safer in terms of fire and emergency for toddlers to be locked in.
You’re simply referring to their bedroom as the crib.
To each their own, when my girl is in a bed she’ll be locked in until a certain age.
I don't lock our toddler in her room at night and don't really see why we would? At night she's sometimes has to use the bathroom. The worst I get on occasion is at 11pm or 12am "Mommy wipe my butt" with a little shadow in our bedroom doorway. I help her out and then she goes back to sleep no issue. She's got a nightlight in her room and for the bathroom so she's not scared to go.
We put a baby gate at the top of the stairs and have bathroom cabinets locked, but our son can get from his room to our room (and eventually the bathroom when he knows how to use it). He can’t get tot he kitchen or main living area past the gate. We wanted him to feel like he could come get us if needed. He hasn’t yet, but he knows how. He is 2 as of June.
My toddler is only 18 months old and still wakes up upset if she’s alone. She’s in a floor bed so she can walk over to the door looking for us. Before we go to bed, we are watching/listening to the video monitor so we get to the door before she does and open it and comfort her. When we go to bed we bring her into our bed with us.
Idk when she will transition to sleeping in her room through the night and we don’t plan to rush her. When she does, we’ll keep her door and our door open and put a baby gate up in the hall. Her room is across the hall from us so she’ll only be able to access our room with that set up. I don’t ever want her to feel she can’t come to mom and dad’s room in the night. But as many of the commenters here are saying, “locking in” could just mean the door is closed but parents are available whenever needed/can hear or see if their kid needs them.
We have a baby gate at the door. So he can open his door and call out to us. He actually loves going into his room, slamming the gate closed loudly hahah.
It didn’t feel right to lock the door, but we needed a way to ensure he was safely contained since transitioning to a floor bed.
I’m the mornings, he’ll pop his door open and call out to us to start the day!
I do, because my son is Autistic and he wanders. Right now we have a child proof cover on the doorknob but when he is older we'll put a lock on the door. I don't want him to drown in the canal near my house.
The second we moved our son to a floor bed at a year we put a safety lock on the door. We live in a single story house, so if he got out of his room he'd have access to the whole house including the dog door to outside. Not to mention the kitchen and any number of things he could get and hurt himself.
We also have a large dog that is a deep sleeper that sleeps in our bedroom. The last thing we would ever want is for our toddler to quietly creep into our bedroom and scare our dog and have him react. He's such a sweetheart, but there's no need for taking any chances.
It all comes down to safety. We also have a camera in his room (he just turned 2) so we know when he rolls over in bed let alone if he's up and crying and we go to him if he needs something or is upset.
Bonus is that he understands that his bedroom is the only place he sleeps. My husband and I are happy to lay with him in his bed if he needs cuddles, but our bed is for mommy and daddy only.
I have a baby gate in the doorway outside of her door. It is not safe for her to be able to potentially wander around the house by herself at night, we have dogs. Along with other things that could potentially be unsafe if she was alone for a long period of time, as do most people.
I cannot imagine not having this safety precaution personally! She is also not sleep trained at all fwiw. She still wakes once a night, and I come to her room to put her back to bed
We secured the doorway for safety reasons. Toddlers don’t self rescue in the event of an emergency or fire. They may hide. Closed doors are much safer in a fire. It keeps fire from spreading and protects the child from smoke inhalation. And it isn’t safe to have a toddler wandering around unsupervised while adults are sleeping. The advice we followed was to safety proof the room and the room becomes the crib. As an added bonus we didn’t have the issue of him leaving the room over and over after bedtime. We had the video monitor so I wasn’t worried about him needing help and not knowing.
We have a safety lock on our 3 year olds room. She doesn’t want to stay put, and frankly it’s way safer for her to be in there than out of the house. We do have a camera in there that we can talk to her and see into her room.
I just have a baby gate behind the door. He can open the normal door but both the baby gate. That way when he wakes up and starts calling us we can hear it
Not yet, but once he moves to a toddler bed I plan to. Our bedrooms are on the second floor which is very small, so all doors are within a few feet of the stairs. It terrifies me to think that all he has to do is wake up scared in his new bed, try to find mom and dad’s room, and make a wrong turn in the dark.
My daughter is almost 4 (and my son is still in a crib so irrelevant for now but the same will be true for him soon enough..) we still have the childproof doorknob for several reasons. 1. She would keep getting out of her room at bedtime and never go to sleep, 2. I don’t want her to have free range unattended if she gets out. She will get into shit she’s not supposed to and make a mess, 3. Safer in the event of a fire to know where she is.
I’m sure I’ll take it off sooner or later once we start night time potty training but she’s not ready yet and neither am I lol
My two year old twins are still in their cribs so this is a non-issue yet but we do plan to have a door knob cover on the inside of their room if they get out of the cribs before we trust them loose in the house. They can barely be loose in the house with an adult fully present during the day, I couldn’t imagine them having full reign of the house alone in the middle of the night with us asleep.
We didn't use any sort of locks or doorknob covers because we didn't need to. Both of our kids were 3 years old before we moved them out of their crib, so they weren't tiny unpredictable toddlers. They were both pretty good at night. The only place they'd go was our room, which is what we wanted them to do. I suppose if they started wandering the house or doing dangerous things, we'd have reconsidered finding a way to keep them in their rooms.
Our toddler is shut in his room once he falls asleep as it’s not safe for him to wander by himself right now, but he prefers to fall asleep with the door ajar so we don’t fully shut it until he’s asleep.
I close my toddlers door but it is not locked. I have a baby gate at the top of the stairs and a nightlight on in the hallway. That being said, my toddler only wakes up and runs into my room or goes back to sleep. If that were to change I would reconsider my setup.
We used a child proof door handle because the stairs to the basement are open and I didn’t like leaving the baby gate locked because the back door in case of an emergency was behind the baby gate.
We stopped using before he was 3.5
We don’t lock our kid in her room. She can come out whenever she needs to and if she wakes up in the night she just comes to get in bed with us. Our main level is completely childproof so even if she decides to wander, there’s nothing she can get into anyway
For his safety we have to, otherwise he'll leave the house, get into chemicals, or get into sweets. They're child proof locks on everything but they do not work on my toddler. My toddler has mastered getting through child proof locks and I hate the company's that made them.
We used to put those childproof knobs on the kids doors when they were little. (We’re right outside their door in the same hallway and stay up late so we’d know if they needed anything) but when we first moved in, our youngest at the time had got the top latch unlocked to the back door late late one night. All windows were opened, cat was gone, and we’re lucky he didn’t seriously harm himself or run off.
I think this is kid dependent. My oldest is nearly four, and started climbing out of the cot at 2, which is when we took a side off her cot and replaced it with a conversion kit, and then she got a big girl bed at nearly 3, before her little sister arrived and evicted her from the cot.
She is and always has been a remarkably good kid. We have never child proofed anything except knives and other sharp objects. She caught on really quickly to what cupboards she is and isn't allowed in, showed no interest in sockets, won't go outside without us, won't go on the road, all that good stuff.
As such, it never occurred to me to lock her in! If she got up she always made a beeline straight to our room. Lately she might bring a breakfast snack with her. Or if she hears her sister is awake she goes in and plays with her until we get up. But she has never gotten into anything, so I never felt she was unsafe. She is also now toilet trained both day and night, and needs access to the toilet.
Now her 9 month old sister on the other hand...RIP me.
We tried to use the little childproofing handle lock once on our toddler 2.5 years ago. He still talks about it. He had such a crazy reaction that we never used it a second time.
My son cannot open his door yet and we actually just laid him down in his “big boy bed” for the first time tonight. I felt bad for him having to essentially be locked in his room but it is truly for his own safety. He is 20 months and we have a basement door that we cannot keep closed due to our cat litter boxes being down there. We plan on getting a childproof door knob cover soon so he doesn’t learn to open it and fall downstairs. It sucks having to lock little ones in their rooms but at the end of the day safety comes first. The hardest part for me is the fact that my son is delayed in his speech development and has a hard time understanding what I mean a majority of the time so I can’t even really explain to him why he needs to stay in his room. It’s tough.
We do it because there is a half wall on our second story and I wouldn’t trust a toddler not to accidentally topple over. We also do it because I’ve heard in an emergency it makes it much easier to find them
Not “locked” but door closed and she doesn’t know how to open them yet. Transitioning to toddler bed tomorrow.
We still have a monitor so if she wakes up or is calling for us we will of course go get her.
Why? So he doesn’t go wandering around the house and potentials get into something dangerous. That said, early on when the crib wall came down he would want us at bed time and try to get out, but now simply doesn’t and know we’ll be back in the morning or how to call for us, but we lock the door for safety as a toddler.
We dont have it locked but there is a toddler proof door handle on the inside so she cant get out but anyone can get in quickly in case of emergency. He room is 100% childproof so she is safe to roam and play in there but i dont want her to be able to roam the house quite yet. although she is about to transitioned our of diapers to bed so we will have to re-evaluate her situation soon.
Personally, I decided not to use a door lock of any kind because I was scared off by people saying it could be reported as child abuse.
But in our condo, we sleep upstairs. There are knob covers on every door except our bedroom and her bedroom and a gate at the top of the stairs. So if she wanders out, the only place she can be is the hallway or our bedroom.
I lock my toddlers in their rooms at night. I also have a baby monitor still, so if they need me I can hear them. Their rooms are basically just their cribs now.
I cannot trust them to be safe in our home unattended. I also cannot trust them to stay put in the event of an emergency. So I keep them safe and contained.
She’s not locked in. We have a gate in the stairs and keep all the hallway doors closed. I sometimes keep her door cracked but she hasn’t wandered out her room… yet lol
Because if I didn't she'd be out the front door or in the sink or get into the knives. I can barely trust her when I am awake and with my ears trained to her, my insurance would never survive her unsupervised at night.
I don’t do it because it’s never been an issue. She’s never been in a crib and if she wakes at night she’s only interested in finding a parent. Also, the setup in our house is that her room is down a short hallway directly to our room, and the entrance to the rest of the house is gated off. A Houdini type of toddler could def escape but that’s not my kid
My sisters and I were never locked in our rooms as toddlers and it was also fine. If we woke up and couldn’t sleep or needed something we went to our parent’s room.
I had her door closed until about 2.5 then we were both sick for months. Between the humidifier and being so tired it worked leaving the door cracked. We're across the hall so she just walks over and comes into our bed. 6 months later and now I wish she stayed in her own bed all night again but at least I don't have to get up either. Sleep > sanity for the win.
He would get out of bed when we were asleep.
Now that he’s older he calls us back to lock his door if we forget. I think it’s a security thing. He likes to lock himself in his room sometimes.
I have one of those door knob covers for the bedroom door, but he sleeps with me though. I mostly have it there, because he wanders and I don't want him getting into other parts of the house, crawling on furniture and getting hurt.
We don’t, but only because the upper level is just our bedroom and our toddlers. The bathroom stays closed and there is a big gate at the top of the stairs, so she can only get to her room or our room. If we had a larger home that we couldn’t safely block off, we would put a toddler knob on her door to keep her safer in the event of an emergency.
No need for us. We have a small hallway that all the bedroom doors open to, and the baby gates at the top and bottom of the stairs are very noisy if anyone messes with them. So if they ever left their room they really wouldn't have anywhere to go but into the next room over with us. Plus the front door has a latch high up that only adults can reach, so they're not about to go wandering out of the house. The practice of locking a kid in their room feels weird/icky to me, and strikes me as dangerous. But really it's not a thing I've ever had to give much thought to.
We locked ours in because his room is at the top of a very steep set of stairs. We couldn’t just have a baby gate on the stairs (or the door) because he could climb them easily by 18mos. So we locked his door. He’s 3,5 now, and we don’t need to lock it anymore, so we don’t.
From 0-2 my child was contained at night in her cot. Once she could climb out of the cot she was contained in her room. Now she’s 3.5 she can open the gate over her door and so she’s contained upstairs by the stair gate. It’s to keep her safe, help her sleep and give her an age appropriate amount of freedom.
We have a childproof doorknob over his the doorknob inside his room. He’s almost 4 and not potty trained, but we started just wearing underwear this week so, soon he will be!!
We have the childproof cover because his bedroom is childproofed but the rest of our upstairs isn’t quite childproof. The bathroom is near the top of the stairs and we haven’t been able to make a gate work there yet. Plus, when we transitioned him out of his crib and to a regular bed, we didn’t have covers on. For the days we didn’t have a cover, he’d quietly sneak out of the room and try roaming the house solo. He was only alone for a couple minutes before I saw the open door on the monitor and woke up. Our home is pretty safe but nothing is safe enough for an unattended toddler. I kept thinking, “what if I hadn’t already woken up? What if it was 3am versus 7am?”
It works for us right now. When he’s a little older and I’m able to trust him outside of his room responsibly then we will remove the cover.
As toddler proof as my home is, I do not trust my toddlers to roam freely when I’m sleeping. It would be so dangerous in the event of an emergency. We just turned the doorknob around so the little flip lock is on the outside and have their baby cam in there so we’re still aware if they need us.
We have a baby gate on our toddlers door. the bedroom door gets shut (safer) but the gate is locked until she is asleep. we open the gate but keep the door shut when we head to bed. she is capable of opening the door. She has yet to actually leave her room when she wakes up in the middle of the night.
My toddler has autism, and is also...a toddler. she unfortunately does not understand the concept of a fire escape plan yet. As someone who has lived through a total house fire (before she was born), and as someone who volunteers in RC disaster services, I def have a plan. Her bedroom door has no lock, it's also very easy to kick in. there is a rolling escape ladder in my bedroom, which is opposite her room, a fire extinguisher, and a fire blanket. All adults know where the outside ladder is (and is easily accessible), and it would go to her bedroom window if necessary. There is of course a fire extinguisher and blanket on the ground floor and outside as well. Safety kits that can handle massive bleeding are accessible at all those locations in the event of injury from breaking a window. I went on a tangent about fire safety, but your house burning down sucks just as much as you think it would--- I encourage everyone to at least THINK what your plan would be. The house fire plan I had thought up before the fire in 2019 went PERFECTLY and everyone, including all large animals and ALL important documents, were out in under 2 minutes from discovering my brother's bed completely in flames.
Back on topic: The baby gate was installed honestly so I could keep her OUT of her room when needed. Doors stay open all day for airflow, and she literally cannot control herself from dumping anything she has access to 🙃 Locking it at night is just in the event she decides to throw open the door to protest going to bed...hasn't really happened yet. I don't feel good about literally locking her in her bedroom and her not even being able to look out of it, so instead everything else is baby proofed. If she got up extra late/early worst case is her dumping out toys in the living room, or gaining access to the fridge or pantry.
Last fire thing: Shut bedroom doors at night. just do it. The fire Marshall literally took us to my brother's remains of a bedroom and told us that if he had shut his door before running out of the house, our house wouldn't have been a complete loss.
We have a gate on my toddlers door for safety! He would happily open the door and walk around the house if we didn’t and I don’t feel comfortable with that if we didn’t hear him, he’s not one to just creep into our bed and sleep with us. It helps him to know that his room is his crib and he has taken to it great! :)
We also have a dog so again, it’s for safety through the night!
I put an electromagnetic lock on the outside of the door and wired it to a plug-in electric timer. That way we could lock the door for 30 mins while our kid fell asleep but still allow him to get out if he woke up in the night or when he woke up in the morning.
I shut the door and she currently can't open it but I will be putting a child proofing device on it so she can't leave at night. It is safer for her to be in her room while we are sleeping. We have a baby monitor and I go and get her the second she asks for me. She knows that I will come and get her so she doesn't leave her bed at night.
We have a baby gate installed on the outside of the regular door. It’s a taller gate. She can open the door from the inside by herself but still can’t get out. But honestly, right now she won’t even get out of the toddler bed by herself, even though she can.
We have a child lock on the knob for my 3-year-old's room. When she moved in there with her big girl bed, she had a problem with letting herself out and would roam around the house. I was really uncomfortable with putting the child lock on there until I spoke with a firefighter about it. His words really sunk in hard. He said if there's ever an emergency, they're not going to get out of the house on their own anyways. It's better to know exactly where they are if somebody needs to rescue them.
We have a gate on the stairs but t
Our toddlers are free to move from their rooms either to come get us or to use the loo when they are able. They just can't get downstairs
It's wildly unsafe for a toddler to have the potential to wander the house at night. Our three year old has one of those child proof doorknob covers on the inside of his door. I just think of his room as a larger crib now. We'll change things when he's potty trained overnight.
We have a knob cover, so for all intents and purposes, he’s locked in. His door essentially opens to the staircase and we don’t have a gate there.
We have a (sound only) monitor and get him whenever he wakes up, so I am not too concerned. He has a little song he sings: “Mommy, I need you; Mommy, I need you” and I come running. LOL.
My daughter isn’t locked in. Her door is closed for safety reasons. Also I have a 100lb dog that likes to walk around and whine at night. He’s walk in there and sniff her or nose her to wake her up like he does us. He’s at the end of life and is having issues.
Having a door closed will prevent fire from getting in the room easily. So it’s a lot safer. Keeps extra noises out, her room is right next to the kitchen. My husband is up at 3am for work
Twin 3 year olds and we def have a chain on that door. They can open it the chain length and talk into the hallway if they want to (which they’ve never done). Those two work together. Not worth the chance of something going wrong in the middle of the night.
We just have a tall baby gate on our toddlers door. We leave her a couple books in her room but the whole room is baby proof. We do not lock her door behind the gate because of a fire hazard or in case of an emergency.
Our toddlers room doesn't even have a door but if it did, I'd probably had lock it at first as a young toddler because his room is upstairs so it's more for safety.
We already had the stairs gated off so yeah.
I guess the only reason would be similar to what I said is for safety because some kids are super quiet and can just leave the room in the morning and like cause a dangerous situation.
My son 5 now but even at 3 or 4 he just goes in our room and lays with us til we wake up.
My daughter is almost 3. Her room door is right in front of stairs (different level of the living room). It would be extremely irresponsible of me to let her leave the room in the middle of the night with the risk of her falling and severely injuring herself. We have a baby monitor with a built-in microphone, so we can communicate with each other very easily. There's not an ounce of abuse going on, it's a measure out of love and meant to protect her. We haven't potty trained her yet, but by the time she is night potty trained I think she will be going up and down stairs with more confidence and better balance.
I don’t believe in “locking in”, but we did put one of those wireless door alarms up so that a chime would sound in our bedroom if he left his room at night.
The phrase “locking in” always feels unnecessarily divisive in these conversations. For numerous safety reasons (fire, injury) we don’t let our toddler just wander the house freely at night. It’s not like there are chains on the door, it’s a door knob cover on the inside. Letting a toddler roam your home unsupervised does not seem more responsible.
Exactly this. People who are vocally against "locking kids in their rooms" on reddit act like maniacal parents are shoving their kids in their rooms at night, locking the door, and laughing all the way to bed, ignoring their child's pleas for assistance during the night. Like, nah, I'm locking my toddler in his room because if he decides to quietly leave and roam the house and by some miracle I don't wake up to the sound of my child thinking too loudly from 30 feet away, he could get seriously hurt. And also if there were an emergency, I'd want to be 100% sure of where he was. I still go in when he calls for me and will check in if he's screaming about something. He was effectively locked in his room when he was in a crib, and people are generally fine with cribs.
A non parent tried to shame a toddler parent in a thread when they mentioned having a child safety lock on the pantry. They were like, that’s horrible to lock up the food from your child. As if they were starving the child because they don’t want a toddler dumping all of the cereal on the floor. People have a similar reaction to putting a child lock on a toddler’s door. They react to it as if it’s an older child being locked out of a pantry or in a room. It’s weird that they don’t understand the difference.
Lol these people do NOT understand toddlers. I once had to cut my kid off at the 6th baby bel cheese. She absolutely would have eaten that entire Costco bag in one sitting and then not pooped for 2 weeks.
Lol totally unrelated to door locks... My kid is the "eat an entire box of strawberries for breakfast" kid. My MIL thought it was hilarious. Regardless of how much I warned against it, she would give him as much as he wanted every time she would visit. I finally told her she was welcome to continue but she would also be in charge of all the acid poop blow-outs, laundry, diaper rash treatment, and soothing to sleep for the next 3 days. She got the message and finally stopped.
To be fair, babybel cheese is delicious.
It really is.
Growing up, if we didn’t lock everything, my youngest brother (he’s on the non-verbal end of the autism spectrum). I remember one morning we woke up to raw eggs all over the kitchen with a bunch of salt and pepper dumped on them. Then in the living room he flung steak sauce and ketchup on the ceiling. Mom made all of us help clean it and I remember it just taking forever. The steak sauce stains are still there to this day. And not only that, but he learned how to unlock keyless locks thanks to his school. We learned that when he escaped the house and ran out to the road. Took a little while to figure out that it wasn’t just mom one of us being careless. Thankfully he was always found quickly by a neighbor and after that dad flipped all the door knobs so that you had to have a key to get out. It was an interesting time.
My step daughter is on the nonverbal end of the spectrum and has done BOTH of those things. 🫠 she is past that period now but has been replaced by my 1 year old. The locks are coming back. Gotta do what you gotta do!
Absolutely. Their safety is worth way more than judgement from others. CPS was thrown off by the flipped locks (a teacher called them a couple times after mom and dad complained about the school teaching how to unlock everything without notifying them) but even they ultimately agreed it was best once mom and dad explained why. Same thing with the locks on the pantry, though they were a bit more familiar with that one. No problems as long as kiddo still eats and is healthy. He’s in his 20s now and obviously allowed access to everything again and can even cook some basic stuff. We all still laugh about the sauce stains on the ceiling. Due to being nonverbal he’s probably always going to have to live with someone, but he’s really smart and rarely any trouble these days.
That’s awesome! Our kiddo is definitely going to have to live with supervision for life but at this point she doesn’t get into anything or try to escape. She won’t even come out of her room unless we tell her to. We moved last year and I’m not sure she realizes she CAN come out, and that we only shut the door to keep the toddler out. We had to chain the inside of the doors at the old house to keep her in the house when she was little because she would totally just run outside when nobody was looking. The doors were so jenky they could be pulled open even when locked with the deadbolt. 😵💫 Fortunately we lived in a rural area so tucked in that even when we directed people to our house they couldn’t find it! So no fear of traffic, and the property was fenced completely so she couldn’t go get lost in the woods! I think as knowledge grows people as a whole are becoming more understanding of the lengths we have to go to for safety as parents of special needs kids!
Oh and heaven forbid you use a leash. Guess it’s better to just let them run into traffic! 🤷♀️
I use a pantry lock because I was tired of wrestling spices out of a running toddler’s hand. He can have food wherever he wants and has his own shelf, but that doesn’t stop him from grabbing off others within his reach. I also use a leash because he wants to touch driving cars. I’m their worst nightmare 😂
You monster!
Until you’ve personally had a runner you shouldn’t say anything about a safety tether. My friend had a little guy like this. He had very few words but one of them was “go!”. He was just always trying to run away.
A leash gives more freedom than forcing them to hold hands!
If they’ll even hold hands. My 3yo refuses and definitely needs her leash. Her safely means more than the judgment of idiots.
I laugh when people give me judgement about our "backpack and tether" - I don't give a rats arse if you disagree with me on the use of this. My kiddo is SAFE, they are not bothering YOU, and they have the freedom they are asking for (the kiddo is under 2 and doesn't have the capacity to understand you need to hold my hand or not run crazy through crowds).
Seriously. I don't know how many snide comments I have received from people about my son's backpack leash. I told a guy once that he confused me for someone that thought his opinion mattered. He did not appreciate my response.
Without a lock on the freezer, my child sneaks downstairs in the early AM to try and sneak ice cream for breakfast.
Bro my toddler turned the pantry into a ladder and climbed up to the top to reach the cereal. Little boys are built different. 😂
I’m dreading the day my toddler realizes he can climb the pantry shelves. I have a latch on the door - but I also have an 8 year old that would forget she has a head if it wasn’t attached to her neck and constantly talking- so she definitely forgets to close and latch doors.
[удалено]
We lock our keys because soooo many parents have had similar experiences. I woke up to our car alarm several times before locking the keys at night…
Right? It's not like we're padlocking 10 year olds in their room at night lmao
We’re not?? Oh right…yeah…we..we are not.
LOL... right...
Save the padlock for when hit 14
This is exactly my thinking. My kid gets into absolutely everything, will climb anything possible including multilevel cat towers, will stand on the dining room chairs and then fall backwards off them, etc etc. He can open his door anytime he likes, but we've put a baby gate across it for good measure and always have the monitor nearby. If anything did happen I would much rather know exactly where he is rather than searching for a hide and seek king who could be hurt, or scared or any number of things.
Your toddler must be besties with mine. I miss the crib so much.
Exactly. It’s just like a much larger crib. It’s not a punishment, it’s for their own safety and security. When our daughter got a little bigger we took the knob cover off and it was a nightmare. She stopped sleeping though the night, always coming out of her room, crying, etc. We put the knob back on out of desperation and within 2 nights she was back to her normal self sleeping like a rock. **She needed that boundary** to feel safe and secure. When she got a little bigger we took it off and she was fine.
This. We also have a video monitor to hear if he wakes up or needs anything.
Exactly. We have had a nanny cam in our child's room since birth. We were constantly looking at it but it's not fool proof either. My kid is 5 now and we no longer limit his movement in the house because he understands that bedtime means that he is supposed to stay in his room unless he's using the bathroom. And before that we used baby gates to allow access to the bathroom but not the rest of the house. We learned the hard way that limiting his movement at nap/bedtime was necessary. During COVID my husband was working from home and my little one was supposed to be napping. I left the house to run an errand and left my husband in charge of the baby monitor. About 20 minutes later I got a notification on our front door Ring Cam and luckily I checked to see what it was because there goes our 2 year old out the front door. Everything was fine but there are many scenarios where it might not have been.
Yes, also it’s not like I don’t open the fucking door at every knock and cry. My child could hardly be considered “ locked up”.
Exactly. I have a doorknob cover in my girls’ room because I live in an old house with a steep staircase that I can’t gate off. I do not want them to get out of their room and fall down the stairs at 3 AM. It’s a safety issue.
Exactly this. I have fallen down my "quaint" 120-year old stairs, delivery people have fallen down them, I am not going to allow my child the chance to very seriously injure themselves in the middle of the night.
100% this. Baby monitor on at all times, prevents wandering and unsafe unsupervised behaviors.
Exactly. My almost 4yo is trustworthy *enough* for me to take a quick shower or go to the bathroom with the door open or run the trash can up to the road really quick.... But I don't want her roaming around the house all night while we are asleep. She could get into any manner of nonsense if she was bored and had run of the house and knew we didn't have eyes on her.
I forgot to lock the trash can earlier and went upstairs to get my kids some socks so we could go outside. In the 2 minutes I was upstairs, my kids (for the first time ever!) took trash out of the trash can, including a paper towel full of old coffee grounds and then smeared the coffee grounds all over the kitchen floor. People do not understand how quickly accidents or purposeful messes can happen.
Ok, I only have a 1.5yo, so I'm here learning the ropes, but I had no idea people lock their trash cans. Knowing my son, it seems inevitable that I'll have to do it too when the time comes.
We lock ours not to stop our toddler from taking stuff out of the trash, but to stop her from putting stuff in! She will put all her toys and our phones and keys and anything she can find in the trash lol
But how do they go to the toilet? Do they have to knock on the door and wake you up?
We took it off when ours hit a bit after 3 and was day time potty trained. Though they are still not night time potty trained which is just based on hormones and not something I can teach. So if they need to pee at 2am? They are just going in their diaper anyway as they won't even wake up and realize they need to pee. I don't go to bed till well after they are sleeping. So if they need to potty after being tucked in they just kinda yell and we heard them both bc of where the room is and the monitor. We also would go in anytime they called which sometimes was literally dozens of times in one evening. Still better than them getting into something they shouldn't at 3am wondering around. Or not knowing where they are in case of a fire. What's funny is my first kid never had an issue...never had to to use the door cover...but my second? Oh man. Her safety is at risk if she was not contained.
When our older kid started waking up at night to go potty, she'd knock on the door or call out that she needed to go potty. We took the doorknob cover off at that point. She was 3 then. My son is 2.5, so whenever he starts waking up to go potty at night, we'll take the doorknob cover off his door too.
Agreed, we also use a know cover. My toddler's room is been thoroughly child-proofed and is the safest place for him to be alone sleeping and in the moments he wakes up and I'm not there yet. I'm not saying the rest of my home isn't childproof, but I think most people on this thread would agree that a determined toddler would surely find the things I've missed if he was free to wander around at night.
I have a gate that blocks toddler from going further than a few meters into the hallway it's the best of both worlds, he has the autonomy to leave his room but is not wondering around the house at night.
I cosleep with my kid and I "lock" us inside. I just don't want him getting out while no one is awake and potentially getting hurt. Our entire house top to bottom isn't child proofed (nor should it have to be).
Yep I agree with this 100%. We put a baby gate across the outside of his door. This is the safest thing for him. He’s a sleep walker and I don’t even want to know what kind of mischief an unconscious toddler could get into with free rein of the house. 😱 For safety I always have the baby monitor on with sound up. Also he can open his door and yell out to us if he needs to, but he doesn’t. I also have a very loud and clear fire alarm in his room and in the hallway.
That and also we have stairs. Could seriously hurt himself going on a night adventure.
I don’t lock my toddler in his room because he is still in his crib but I do have one of those pop up child proofing levers on his door handle and I will have that active when I move him to a toddler bed. This is because in the event of an emergency like a fire he would not be able to safely evacuate himself. He is two years old. I feel he is safer being in a known location than wandering our house loose in case of emergency. I also don’t think two year olds are old enough to be unsupervised for more than a couple of minutes. If he was free to leave his room at night when I’m asleep then he would be essentially unsupervised for hours having free reign of the house. In his childproof bedroom he is safe.
Yep - just transitioned my 22 month old to his toddler bed and have one of these. I felt a bit weird at first locking him in, but honestly, it’s the same as a baby gate. We have the monitor and another camera to see the whole room so we can keep an eye on him. For his safety and our sanity, this keeps him contained in an area where he is safe and I can see what he’s doing. And to your point - he is in one location in case we need to get to him.
Actually it’s safer than a baby gate because closed doors reduce fire risk as well, and gates don’t
Very true! I’m a stickler for every bedroom door closed at night because of this
Ok came here to say this- I saw a fire safety video once and have closed my kids doors ever since. They are not locked, but definitely closed.
Gosh, I know it's a height thing, but 22 months sounds SO EARLY. We JUST moved our girl to toddler bed at nearly 3. She's tormenting us now, we might have to lock her in her room. She comes downstairs and gets in bed with us, sometimes it's sweet and cuddly, usually it's her needing something that makes no sense at 4am and kicking me.
Yes he’s right at the crib height limit and I’m due with his brother in 6 weeks so I wanted to get through this before the new baby comes lol He never tried to climb out and so far he hasn’t gotten out of his bed at all so we will see how it goes lol
Last time this discussion popped up a fireman said this is what they suggest. They’d much rather breakdown a door than have to search the whole house.
100% agree. We did the same for our son until potty training and by then he was used to staying in his room so we could safely stop.
Exactly! I didn’t lock them in but I did have a knob lock on the inside of their doorknobs. It kept them from escaping and getting in to things like cat food (this was an issue). Unfortunately they both learned to open them before they were three but by that time they’d grown out of eating the cat food and would come wake us up.
2.5 yo here - I’m glad to hear they grow out of eating the cat food as I’m still firmly in that stage!
My 2 year old gets “locked in” via a childproofing device on the outside of the door. So I can get in but he can’t get out. I still use a monitor with sound and video and attend to him the same as always, but once we transitioned out of the crib I didn’t feel it was safe for him to potentially get out of bed and wander the house without me knowing. It’s purely for safety and nothing more. I don’t really see how it’s different than them being “locked” in a crib where they also cannot get out without assistance. If anything, being in the toddler bed with the ability to roam their room, but not leave their room, is more freedom than when they were just in the crib. I’m shocked that this is controversial. Maybe for a child sure, but a toddler roaming free without supervision is a major safety issue in my opinion.
We have one of those child proof knob covers just because I don’t QUITE trust her yet to not go wandering around in the middle of the night. She has a little potty in her bedroom. She’ll be 4 in October. We have a gate at the stairs and child proof locks on the bathroom cabinets so I think I’ll be removing it when she turns 4. I think it all depends on your setup, your trust that your child will stay in their room and your overall comfort level.
We called the potty in his bedroom his en suite potty.
I was wondering about the potty situation once they are potty trained! We’re still in crib/diapers but our upstairs is definitely not safe for a roaming toddler. We can’t put a gate at the top of the stairs due to the layout and they are steep high stairs. Potty in the room is a good idea if they have to go.
Rather than considering it locking in I would look at it as turning their room in to one giant crib. We did a knob cover and transition to a bed for my toddler when he started climbing out of his crib.
Same here! My guy climbed out of his crib really early (like he wasn’t even 18 months yet) but he already knew how to open doors. No way was I letting my tiny not even one and a half year old out to wander in the house all night. It’s mostly baby proofed but not to the extent he can be wandering all night alone. I put (safe) toys in his room and a whole bunch of books and baby proofed his room until there wasn’t a single thing he could get into. Now at 21 months he’s happy to just play in his room when he’s up and will bang in the door when he wants out. It’s also nice knowing in an emergency I know exactly where he is at night if he for whatever reason wasn’t sleeping
I’m a nanny not a parent but one reason parents do it is because in case of an emergency they know exactly where their toddler is.
This. Smoke inhalation is usually what kills people in a house fire. Not burns. If a child hides they might not be found before they die of smoke inhalation.
Our local fire department recommends toddlers be locked in their room at night. In the case of a fire or other emergency, you know exactly where they are. A child will be scared in a fire and could hide from firefighters.
Yes. Firefighter are trained to get in locked rooms where kids are. I am a big fan of the slide lock in the top that can be accessed by adults from both sides.
I know it's maybe unreasonable and anxiety/trauma driven but I just need to know with certainty where my kid is at night! So while I'm super pro independence on like every other front we do have a knob protector on his door so he can't open it. I'd just have a baby gate at the top of the stairs (all bedrooms are on the 2nd floor) but it doesn't work for our cats. He's not good at knobs and ours are pretty stiff so I'm not even sure he could open his door without it. He has never complained and doesn't try to get through it. I have a baby monitor for his room so we know when he needs us!
It’s not unreasonable, it’s a safety best practice
The way you word it you make it sound so abusive lol. Small children can’t be trusted to have free unsupervised roam of the house at night. Plus in the event of a fire it’s safer to have the door closed. I don’t lock my daughter in, I just close the door.
Unrelated to sleep training for us. My kids lacked the impulse control to be allowed to roam around when they switched from a crib to a bed (both were under 2 when they switched to beds) and I was worried they would get into trouble on their own or hide somewhere during an emergency. Once my older kid started waking up at night to go potty (around 3), we took the lock off and just had a baby gate at the top of the stairs. My younger one is 2.5 and we'll do the same for him. I don't lock them away as a punishment or to cry alone. It's a safety measure.
We don't lock the door but we do close it. Closed doors are so so important for fire safety. It slows down the spread of smoke and can make a huge difference for how fast a fire spreads. Two-fold here, I also know where he should be in an emergency. If he does get out though we have another door that separates the bedrooms from the rest of the house so he will be in our room if not his (he will knock on our door).
I saw someone say their pediatrician compared it to a crib. When they’re in a crib they can’t roam the house and you know where they are, and locking the door ensures the same thing.
We’ve never locked him in his room. He’s been in a floor bed since he was 18 months, he’s 3.5 now. When he wakes up at night, he immediately comes to our room. He’s never wandered the house or anything. My nephew on the other hand walked out the front door multiple times, so they put a lock on the front door. We’ve always had a toddler lock thing on our front door, but never his bedroom.
Same here. Our son is almost 3.5, been in floor bed since 18 months. Whenever he wakes at night the only thing he has ever done is call for us and now that he’s older he just comes right to our room. He also entertains himself, gets snacks, watches a show while I shower and get ready in the morning. But, we have a one year old daughter. She is still in her pack n play but I have this gut feeling that she will not be the same way and we may be on the child proofing , door locking side of this convo. Time will tell lol
We use a child proof knob cover on the inside. He kept getting into stuff when we didn't have it on and it's impossible to fully child proof our entire house.
I don’t want my toddler roaming around at night, getting into unsafe things. And her door is right near the stairs in a very dark hallway.
Do you lock your toddler in the house at night? If so, why? Because you don’t want them wandering outside into an unsafe situation? Same idea for “locking” them into their room. The house is not completely safe for a toddler to roam for hours if she were to wake up and get out in the middle of the night.
I was absolutely against this until my two year old got up at 3am, walked OUT THE FRONT DOOR, got the two pet piglets (both about 40kg by that point) out of their pen and bought them into the house for a little pig party. I could hear banging and thumping and I came out to find him in the living room, front door wide open, with two pigs going crazy while he scattered handfuls of potato chips around the place (and attempting to ride them) We lock the door now.
This is the most chaotic thing he could have done at 3am 😂
I was in SHOCK. It was so bizarre! He wasn’t even scared to march out in the middle of the night? We are rural too so it is dark!! Just realised I should add pig tax
We have a winner! 🤣
I always leave a path to the parents’ bedroom and lock the kitchen, nothing interesting is in the dark corridor, so my son goes straight to us if he wants something. It depends greatly on your layout, like if you have a ladder in your house, you probably don’t want a toddler to go there at the middle of the night. Baby monitor is a good solution, which lets you lock the baby’s room and wake up if something is happening.
We don’t restrain him to his room but we baby gate off the rest of the house so he can only go from his room down the hall to our room also. We have a baby monitor. I’m not comfortable keeping him in his room (or any confined space alone) when he’s scared and doesn’t want to be there. Personally, the idea turns my stomach and I have friends who do this but it’s not something I’m comfortable with at all. The layout of our house allows him to safely go from his room to ours without accessing the rest of the house.
It’s no different than a kid being stuck in a crib IMO. And no one takes issue with that (that I’ve ever heard of anyway).
Under the age of 5 it is not safe for them to have access to the full house when unsupervised. I think at 5 most understand danger and rules enough maybe? Not sure why that is the recommendation honestly. But my 3 year old is likely to try to turn on the tub herself because she LOVES water and swimming. And we wouldn’t know if we were sleeping. But also fire safety. 1. If they open the door, fire spreads faster. And 2. If a fire occurs, an adult or firefighter knows exactly where to find them to rescue them. With access to the house, they might get scared and hide somewhere obscure, which can have deadly consequences.
Child safety locks are my first line of defense, and if that fails to work before he can safely have free roam of the house I would absolutely flip the knob and lock him in. First is that he doesn't understand all the safety stuff of having free roam of the house. It's not just snacks and food he shouldn't get into, but accidental drowning in the tub if he got into the bathroom, falling down the steps in the dark and breaking a bone or a concussion, managing to turn the stove on, and even leaving the house are all risks of a small child having unfettered unmanaged unsupervised access to the whole home. Second is it's a fire risk. In the case of a fire you don't want a small child huddled behind a couch or behind a curtain. They are less likely to be found. By shutting them in their room and making the door inaccessible for them to open, you and the first responders know they're in their room and can find them quicker. This reduces the chances of bodily harm or death by fire. And also in regards to fire safety, a shut door slows down the path of a fire. Whole rooms can remain untouched because of a shut door. This increases the chances of your child surviving unharmed and gives first responders a longer time to access the room snd your child with less risk to everyone involved. Fire follows oxygen, and the shut door reduces the air flow between between rooms so it can't rush into that room.
My son just turned three, we have a doorknob cover on his door. Itʻs just plain not safe for him to have access to the rest of the house while weʻre sleeping. We have a monitor, when he wakes up he calls for us and we get right up and get him.
Locked. Mainly because we have stairs she loves to (dangerously) play on and worry she'd climb the stairs gate. Her room is the most baby-proofed and next to ours so we can hear if she needs help. She'd also probably terrorize the dog (her "best friend").
I don’t lock the door because they haven’t attempted to open it. They don’t leave their beds at night or nap time. They will play with a toy or read a book in bed and wait for me. I didn’t train them to do this but I hope it lasts lol. But.. if they do try to open the door, I will have to consider locking. I don’t think it’s safe for two 3 year olds wandering the house.
Maybe I’m an outlier but my daughter never leaves her bed, her style is more “wake up and yell” - we close her door almost all the way but don’t click it and she has never come out… she’s now 3.5 in a twin bed. We also sit by her bed until she falls asleep.
I used to lock the door but then one day my husband put up a baby gate so now they can open and close the door freely but the baby gate is there to keep them to their room.
We only lock it when we go to bed ourselves. If we’re up and about we can walk her back to bed, but she still wakes in the night and our house is one floor. She’s got the video monitor, her own potty, and calls for me if she’s not feeling well. She’s 3.5
Because in an emergency, I want to know exactly where my kid is.
It’s controversial because some parents lock the child in their room and ignore their pleas to come out. They sob on the other side of the door and the parents ignore them until morning. Pretty disgusting and negligent. We use a gate on the outside of the door and obviously a monitor. Door stays closed to keep the cat out and keep the room temp controlled. We never ignore our LO if she calls out or cries!!!
We chose not to because I wanted to instill early on that no matter what time it is you can always come get us if you need us. We also kept the camera in the room for a while so if he got up or needed something we would know, but he also was allowed to come into our room if he felt he needed to. All of our external doors are locked with chain locks at the top at night so I’m not concerned about him escaping and I guess maybe I’ve just been lucky that he’s not interested in roaming the house (except when I didn’t hide the Christmas presents well enough and he decided to open them a week early).
Exactly this. My oldest is a spicy temperament and we realized very quickly that traditional sleep training was very stressful for her so we have always been responsive when she needed us in the night and we’ve never regretted that as our general approach. Now that she is older, when she needs us in the night (not frequently), I want her to know she can come get us. I remember going to my moms side of the bed and asking her to come lay with me when I had a nightmare. I would have been so sad to be locked in my room. Thankfully, my mischievous and strong willed 3.5 year old has not been roaming the house and maybe if she did we would change our plans. We do have the stairs to downstairs with a baby gate so she doesn’t like sleep walk down the stairs or something so it’s not like she has free rein, but it’s very important to us that she can get to us.
Question for those who do secure the toddler's bedroom: what do you use if you have door handles instead of knobs? My kiddo is strong. We tried a thing that is supposed to prevent the handle from turning - she just put her weight into it and snapped it off.
I turned the handle around so the lock is on the outside.
They make childproof hinge locks that go on the top hinge of the door, not the doorknob. In your case, a baby gate in front of the door might work better/be cheaper and easier and then just make sure the door is shut before you go to bed. If she can hop the gate .... best of luck to you haha
Use one of these, they are tough. https://www.amazon.com/Improved-Childproof-Prevents-Toddlers-Operation/dp/B07RVGYRL6/ref=mp_s_a_1_14?crid=3KWU6WYE0I5IT&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.km5nVDgN7dkezj3zuMqTJPUQa2Rf2aN9unZ96PqAI2FQN4MA-OUVrSzBZRieabqUHjnY8aSXSkaE6cME2WBxDGSaVEv_Hn428NSacl95RBnZdvqMqje0pW-bowc8AA5yV3IJeDWnKQPdTiNEfzuo19d6Vrucs7iaZ6uxuCNLw0-WWWBvlm_Ykj1R57E65YEemwrKmZDioyV2yb7YKWnPlQ.6EeyINj_wkbVwofLILt0dfEacmoaAns0Y22PcgxLDKM&dib_tag=se&keywords=handle+lock+baby+proofing&qid=1720574478&sprefix=handle+lock+baby+proofing%2Caps%2C132&sr=8-14
I replaced it with a knob.
We hired a baby proofing company and he used [this lock](https://a.co/d/08ed3NvE) on our doors.
We definitely do. We don’t lock it but he can’t open the door so basically the same thing. It’s not safe for him to be able to be able to walk around at night with us asleep and frankly he’s never go to sleep if he would just get up and walk out.
I had one on my son’s door from 2.5-4. I was paranoid about him getting out of the house or wandering around while I was sleeping. I had a camera in there that alerted me to movement and sound.
My 3 year old has a childproof cover on the knob inside his room. A child who is too young to reliably evacuate in a smoky, loud emergency is a child who is too young to have access to the home at night. We have a baby monitor and he is aware he can ask for help if he needs us. Sometimes that's because he's sick or scared, sometimes it's because his toenail is too long or he doesn't want to get out of bed to get his teddy bear on the floor. 🤣 He's at the stage where he sometimes will get up to pee at night, sometimes not, so he wears an overnight pull-up but his potty is in his room. I had been apprehensive about this but it's been a total non-issue.
I need to sleep at some point, and given the style and layout of our house and what my daughter (autistic and now 7yo) has proven capable of there's no safe way to make it so she can be let out unsupervised. When started this practice as soon as she figured out how to climb out of her crib and broke the METAL store bought baby gates we were using, when she was 2yo. We had to replace all the safety gates we use with goat doors like you'd find in a barn, and then make adjustments as she learned to vault over them.
My situation is somewhat unique, I have a baby gate in the hallway so my kiddo can be in his room or mine and that's all. I'm not sure what I would do in a different house layout.
I sometimes lock my kids in at bedtime if they are being silly and won’t listen and stay in bed. I unlock before going to bed myself, because they are consistently good at staying in bed until morning once asleep. But if I had any concerns about them trying to go outside or something, I would keep it locked. Better locked in than getting out by accident. My younger sister got out multiple times in her toddlerhood, once when she was supposed to be napping and she got across a busy street by herself.
We have a baby gate in our 4 year old’s doorway because he’s escaped the house twice. We chose a gate instead of locking the door so that he can still communicate with us if he needs something. (Our house has a strange setup.) I honestly don’t know when we’re going to feel comfortable leaving the gate open at night. The kid is fearless.
We locked our toddler in (with a child proof handle) until she was nighttime potty trained. She's 3.5 now and isn't locked in her room only because 1) the only place she goes when she wakes up is our room or the bathroom and 2) she very rarely wakes up as it is. 3) She also figured out the childproof know so unless we want to go out and buy a new doorknob with a literal lock on it we have no other option left 😂 In the event of the an emergency it's safer for your toddler to be in their room where you know they are and not wandering the house where you can't find them.
My kiddo didn't move to her own room until she was 2. We didn't lock her in, she had a floor bed. But she refused to leave her bed without us present, let alone her room. We also set her door up to alert us if it opened and had a baby camera that alerted us to movement or sound. She's 4.5 now and still wants the camera. If she has been more willing to leave her room without us, we'd have done a baby gate
Our toddler is currently in our bed, but even when he was in his room we had a baby proof door knob cover on. We also have a cover on our bedroom door. Not to “lock him in” but just to make sure he wouldn’t get out and wander overnight. Our house is like 99.9% kid proofed but it only takes ten seconds for him to try to find the one thing I overlooked.
We never LOCKED for safety reasons. We used door knob protectors also for safety reasons but always have baby monitors on in case they call for us. Now I leave their doors open but that’s because I know their habits and it allows them to come to my bed if they need me
I don’t do it. My 3 year old comes in our bed every night and I would love him to stay in his own but not enough to lock him in. It feels Victorian and I can’t bear the thought of him feeling scared or lonely and not being able to come for a cuddle.
There are a million ways my 2.5 yr old could kill himself if he wandered our house at night from turning on the stove or oven to unlocking the front door and walking out to climbing furniture and falling. If he needs something, he tells us through the monitor. We don't have a lock on his door but we have a gate that he cannot open in the door frame.
I hadn’t given this a thought since my daughter still sleeps in the room with us. My initial thought at the caption my gut feeling was HELL NO. But after reading the comments it makes total sense to do so and it’s the safest thing to do. 100% i will be doing this when she is ready to transition to her own room.
literally my thought process lmao. first reaction was like hell no that sounds abusive and then after reading i’m like this is literally common sense and why wouldn’t a parent do this
We put one of those door knob childproof covers on my son’s door once he moved into his big bed (he went from a crib to toddler bed to twin in quick succession). He realized he could open the door and it was becoming fun at about 2 AM. We just didn’t want him wandering in the house at night; knowing where he (and our dog is) is important to me incase of an emergency. When we did this, we had a talk with him about calling for mommy or daddy, instead of opening the door by himself. And he does. However mornings, if I’m too slow to come get him when he’s calling for me, he’ll climb out of bed and shake the ever living heck out of his door and subsequently the house.
It's the safest thing to do until they can be trusted to not do something dumb, or know what to do in an emergency. Our 4yo still has a doorknob cover. We don't even trust him to go to the bathroom alone at night without doing something dumb.
honestly I don’t , but I don’t judge people who do. We just got lucky with our kid , if he does come out his room it’s always straight to us even now at 4. he just doesn’t enjoy being alone . so we never had felt the need to lock it. If a fire alarm or anything goes off he such a heavy sleeper we usually get to him first before he even realizes . now my nephew is 5, And he is autistic and will often elope . when he is here for sleepovers and when he is at his own home ,we do lock the bedroom door , he has escaped many times his own home and I won’t let it happen on my watch. So I always say. It’s what works for your family and child .
Everyone is going to do what is best for their child personally. For example, I had to sleep train my baby because the situation only escalated if I ever entered her room and tried to soothe her (in a situation where she is already fed and changed). The reason is because she would be mad she couldn’t sleep- the crying was a matter of frustration, and to this very day, me bothering her STILL frustrates her further tenfold and I must let her have space and settle on her own. I never like doing this, and it drives my mom instinct insane, but it took a lot of trial and error over the course of a very long period of time to learn it’s the best way. I think I would feel the same way about locking her in her room. I would hate it, but if necessary for my daughter to not be sleep deprived, I would do it. In my current situation my 4 year old is good about staying in her room - it’s far more likely for me that locking her in will prevent her from escaping in an emergency than it is for her to cause one, so because of that personal likelihood in my house I don’t do it. Plus she is potty trained so she needs access to the bathroom.
We do not lock our doors because we do not have a toddler who regularly leaves, but we do have a toddler who occasionally has a nightmare and comes fleeing from her room but cannot seem to find us at night. Unfortunately that puts her path of travel riiiight in front our stairs so to stop accidentally falling, we baby gate the top of the stairs and she can't open it. But genuinely, my biggest fear is that one of our children will just wander their way outside. Would much rather our children learn to call for us than worry about how they are doing all night.
Exactly why I didn't do busy boards with my toddler, I am going to delay her learning how to unlock things or open doors for as looooong as possible!
Up until a year or so ago (4yr old), we had a baby gate on the entrance to her room. Because we could not put a baby gate at the top of the stairs (our stairs are awkward) and I wasn't risking her falling down the stairs in the middle of the night. She's had it off a while now and only wanders to the bathroom or our room in the middle of the night.
It’s actually a safer in terms of fire and emergency for toddlers to be locked in. You’re simply referring to their bedroom as the crib. To each their own, when my girl is in a bed she’ll be locked in until a certain age.
I’m a trauma therapist so I have heard so many stories of parents losing small children to preventable accidents. I am pro-lock all the way.
I don't lock our toddler in her room at night and don't really see why we would? At night she's sometimes has to use the bathroom. The worst I get on occasion is at 11pm or 12am "Mommy wipe my butt" with a little shadow in our bedroom doorway. I help her out and then she goes back to sleep no issue. She's got a nightlight in her room and for the bathroom so she's not scared to go.
If my daughter didn’t get locked in at night she would never actually sleep. She would wander the house yelling for us to come play.
Locked. Whatever you want to call it. My toddlers can’t be trusted to roam the house at night and get into (or out of) who knows what.
We put a baby gate at the top of the stairs and have bathroom cabinets locked, but our son can get from his room to our room (and eventually the bathroom when he knows how to use it). He can’t get tot he kitchen or main living area past the gate. We wanted him to feel like he could come get us if needed. He hasn’t yet, but he knows how. He is 2 as of June.
My toddler is only 18 months old and still wakes up upset if she’s alone. She’s in a floor bed so she can walk over to the door looking for us. Before we go to bed, we are watching/listening to the video monitor so we get to the door before she does and open it and comfort her. When we go to bed we bring her into our bed with us. Idk when she will transition to sleeping in her room through the night and we don’t plan to rush her. When she does, we’ll keep her door and our door open and put a baby gate up in the hall. Her room is across the hall from us so she’ll only be able to access our room with that set up. I don’t ever want her to feel she can’t come to mom and dad’s room in the night. But as many of the commenters here are saying, “locking in” could just mean the door is closed but parents are available whenever needed/can hear or see if their kid needs them.
That's not a good idea for fire safety. You want all doors closed to prevent fire from spreading.
We have a baby gate at the door. So he can open his door and call out to us. He actually loves going into his room, slamming the gate closed loudly hahah. It didn’t feel right to lock the door, but we needed a way to ensure he was safely contained since transitioning to a floor bed. I’m the mornings, he’ll pop his door open and call out to us to start the day!
I do, because my son is Autistic and he wanders. Right now we have a child proof cover on the doorknob but when he is older we'll put a lock on the door. I don't want him to drown in the canal near my house.
The second we moved our son to a floor bed at a year we put a safety lock on the door. We live in a single story house, so if he got out of his room he'd have access to the whole house including the dog door to outside. Not to mention the kitchen and any number of things he could get and hurt himself. We also have a large dog that is a deep sleeper that sleeps in our bedroom. The last thing we would ever want is for our toddler to quietly creep into our bedroom and scare our dog and have him react. He's such a sweetheart, but there's no need for taking any chances. It all comes down to safety. We also have a camera in his room (he just turned 2) so we know when he rolls over in bed let alone if he's up and crying and we go to him if he needs something or is upset. Bonus is that he understands that his bedroom is the only place he sleeps. My husband and I are happy to lay with him in his bed if he needs cuddles, but our bed is for mommy and daddy only.
I have a baby gate in the doorway outside of her door. It is not safe for her to be able to potentially wander around the house by herself at night, we have dogs. Along with other things that could potentially be unsafe if she was alone for a long period of time, as do most people. I cannot imagine not having this safety precaution personally! She is also not sleep trained at all fwiw. She still wakes once a night, and I come to her room to put her back to bed
We secured the doorway for safety reasons. Toddlers don’t self rescue in the event of an emergency or fire. They may hide. Closed doors are much safer in a fire. It keeps fire from spreading and protects the child from smoke inhalation. And it isn’t safe to have a toddler wandering around unsupervised while adults are sleeping. The advice we followed was to safety proof the room and the room becomes the crib. As an added bonus we didn’t have the issue of him leaving the room over and over after bedtime. We had the video monitor so I wasn’t worried about him needing help and not knowing.
We have a safety lock on our 3 year olds room. She doesn’t want to stay put, and frankly it’s way safer for her to be in there than out of the house. We do have a camera in there that we can talk to her and see into her room.
I just have a baby gate behind the door. He can open the normal door but both the baby gate. That way when he wakes up and starts calling us we can hear it
Not yet, but once he moves to a toddler bed I plan to. Our bedrooms are on the second floor which is very small, so all doors are within a few feet of the stairs. It terrifies me to think that all he has to do is wake up scared in his new bed, try to find mom and dad’s room, and make a wrong turn in the dark.
My daughter is almost 4 (and my son is still in a crib so irrelevant for now but the same will be true for him soon enough..) we still have the childproof doorknob for several reasons. 1. She would keep getting out of her room at bedtime and never go to sleep, 2. I don’t want her to have free range unattended if she gets out. She will get into shit she’s not supposed to and make a mess, 3. Safer in the event of a fire to know where she is. I’m sure I’ll take it off sooner or later once we start night time potty training but she’s not ready yet and neither am I lol
My two year old twins are still in their cribs so this is a non-issue yet but we do plan to have a door knob cover on the inside of their room if they get out of the cribs before we trust them loose in the house. They can barely be loose in the house with an adult fully present during the day, I couldn’t imagine them having full reign of the house alone in the middle of the night with us asleep.
I do, we don’t have a gate on our stairs because there aren’t many and I just can’t get comfortable with full house access at four
We didn't use any sort of locks or doorknob covers because we didn't need to. Both of our kids were 3 years old before we moved them out of their crib, so they weren't tiny unpredictable toddlers. They were both pretty good at night. The only place they'd go was our room, which is what we wanted them to do. I suppose if they started wandering the house or doing dangerous things, we'd have reconsidered finding a way to keep them in their rooms.
Not “locked in” but childproof door knob cover, yes. He cannot safely roam the house in the middle of the night unsupervised.
Our toddler is shut in his room once he falls asleep as it’s not safe for him to wander by himself right now, but he prefers to fall asleep with the door ajar so we don’t fully shut it until he’s asleep.
I close my toddlers door but it is not locked. I have a baby gate at the top of the stairs and a nightlight on in the hallway. That being said, my toddler only wakes up and runs into my room or goes back to sleep. If that were to change I would reconsider my setup.
We used a child proof door handle because the stairs to the basement are open and I didn’t like leaving the baby gate locked because the back door in case of an emergency was behind the baby gate. We stopped using before he was 3.5
We don’t lock our kid in her room. She can come out whenever she needs to and if she wakes up in the night she just comes to get in bed with us. Our main level is completely childproof so even if she decides to wander, there’s nothing she can get into anyway
For his safety we have to, otherwise he'll leave the house, get into chemicals, or get into sweets. They're child proof locks on everything but they do not work on my toddler. My toddler has mastered getting through child proof locks and I hate the company's that made them.
We used to put those childproof knobs on the kids doors when they were little. (We’re right outside their door in the same hallway and stay up late so we’d know if they needed anything) but when we first moved in, our youngest at the time had got the top latch unlocked to the back door late late one night. All windows were opened, cat was gone, and we’re lucky he didn’t seriously harm himself or run off.
I found my 2 year old in the kitchen with a granola bar. It was 2 am. The next day we flipped his door knob.
I think this is kid dependent. My oldest is nearly four, and started climbing out of the cot at 2, which is when we took a side off her cot and replaced it with a conversion kit, and then she got a big girl bed at nearly 3, before her little sister arrived and evicted her from the cot. She is and always has been a remarkably good kid. We have never child proofed anything except knives and other sharp objects. She caught on really quickly to what cupboards she is and isn't allowed in, showed no interest in sockets, won't go outside without us, won't go on the road, all that good stuff. As such, it never occurred to me to lock her in! If she got up she always made a beeline straight to our room. Lately she might bring a breakfast snack with her. Or if she hears her sister is awake she goes in and plays with her until we get up. But she has never gotten into anything, so I never felt she was unsafe. She is also now toilet trained both day and night, and needs access to the toilet. Now her 9 month old sister on the other hand...RIP me.
We tried to use the little childproofing handle lock once on our toddler 2.5 years ago. He still talks about it. He had such a crazy reaction that we never used it a second time.
My son cannot open his door yet and we actually just laid him down in his “big boy bed” for the first time tonight. I felt bad for him having to essentially be locked in his room but it is truly for his own safety. He is 20 months and we have a basement door that we cannot keep closed due to our cat litter boxes being down there. We plan on getting a childproof door knob cover soon so he doesn’t learn to open it and fall downstairs. It sucks having to lock little ones in their rooms but at the end of the day safety comes first. The hardest part for me is the fact that my son is delayed in his speech development and has a hard time understanding what I mean a majority of the time so I can’t even really explain to him why he needs to stay in his room. It’s tough.
We do it because there is a half wall on our second story and I wouldn’t trust a toddler not to accidentally topple over. We also do it because I’ve heard in an emergency it makes it much easier to find them
Not “locked” but door closed and she doesn’t know how to open them yet. Transitioning to toddler bed tomorrow. We still have a monitor so if she wakes up or is calling for us we will of course go get her.
Why? So he doesn’t go wandering around the house and potentials get into something dangerous. That said, early on when the crib wall came down he would want us at bed time and try to get out, but now simply doesn’t and know we’ll be back in the morning or how to call for us, but we lock the door for safety as a toddler.
We dont have it locked but there is a toddler proof door handle on the inside so she cant get out but anyone can get in quickly in case of emergency. He room is 100% childproof so she is safe to roam and play in there but i dont want her to be able to roam the house quite yet. although she is about to transitioned our of diapers to bed so we will have to re-evaluate her situation soon.
Personally, I decided not to use a door lock of any kind because I was scared off by people saying it could be reported as child abuse. But in our condo, we sleep upstairs. There are knob covers on every door except our bedroom and her bedroom and a gate at the top of the stairs. So if she wanders out, the only place she can be is the hallway or our bedroom.
I lock my toddlers in their rooms at night. I also have a baby monitor still, so if they need me I can hear them. Their rooms are basically just their cribs now. I cannot trust them to be safe in our home unattended. I also cannot trust them to stay put in the event of an emergency. So I keep them safe and contained.
She’s not locked in. We have a gate in the stairs and keep all the hallway doors closed. I sometimes keep her door cracked but she hasn’t wandered out her room… yet lol
Because if I didn't she'd be out the front door or in the sink or get into the knives. I can barely trust her when I am awake and with my ears trained to her, my insurance would never survive her unsupervised at night.
I don’t do it because it’s never been an issue. She’s never been in a crib and if she wakes at night she’s only interested in finding a parent. Also, the setup in our house is that her room is down a short hallway directly to our room, and the entrance to the rest of the house is gated off. A Houdini type of toddler could def escape but that’s not my kid My sisters and I were never locked in our rooms as toddlers and it was also fine. If we woke up and couldn’t sleep or needed something we went to our parent’s room.
I had her door closed until about 2.5 then we were both sick for months. Between the humidifier and being so tired it worked leaving the door cracked. We're across the hall so she just walks over and comes into our bed. 6 months later and now I wish she stayed in her own bed all night again but at least I don't have to get up either. Sleep > sanity for the win.
I'd keep the camera running at my bedside to make sure I could hear everything.
He would get out of bed when we were asleep. Now that he’s older he calls us back to lock his door if we forget. I think it’s a security thing. He likes to lock himself in his room sometimes.
I have one of those door knob covers for the bedroom door, but he sleeps with me though. I mostly have it there, because he wanders and I don't want him getting into other parts of the house, crawling on furniture and getting hurt.
We don’t, but only because the upper level is just our bedroom and our toddlers. The bathroom stays closed and there is a big gate at the top of the stairs, so she can only get to her room or our room. If we had a larger home that we couldn’t safely block off, we would put a toddler knob on her door to keep her safer in the event of an emergency.
We don't. Upstairs at night we leave his door and our door open so he's free to come through to us if he needs something
I used a safety gate on my sons bedroom door
No need for us. We have a small hallway that all the bedroom doors open to, and the baby gates at the top and bottom of the stairs are very noisy if anyone messes with them. So if they ever left their room they really wouldn't have anywhere to go but into the next room over with us. Plus the front door has a latch high up that only adults can reach, so they're not about to go wandering out of the house. The practice of locking a kid in their room feels weird/icky to me, and strikes me as dangerous. But really it's not a thing I've ever had to give much thought to.
We locked ours in because his room is at the top of a very steep set of stairs. We couldn’t just have a baby gate on the stairs (or the door) because he could climb them easily by 18mos. So we locked his door. He’s 3,5 now, and we don’t need to lock it anymore, so we don’t.
From 0-2 my child was contained at night in her cot. Once she could climb out of the cot she was contained in her room. Now she’s 3.5 she can open the gate over her door and so she’s contained upstairs by the stair gate. It’s to keep her safe, help her sleep and give her an age appropriate amount of freedom.
We have a childproof doorknob over his the doorknob inside his room. He’s almost 4 and not potty trained, but we started just wearing underwear this week so, soon he will be!! We have the childproof cover because his bedroom is childproofed but the rest of our upstairs isn’t quite childproof. The bathroom is near the top of the stairs and we haven’t been able to make a gate work there yet. Plus, when we transitioned him out of his crib and to a regular bed, we didn’t have covers on. For the days we didn’t have a cover, he’d quietly sneak out of the room and try roaming the house solo. He was only alone for a couple minutes before I saw the open door on the monitor and woke up. Our home is pretty safe but nothing is safe enough for an unattended toddler. I kept thinking, “what if I hadn’t already woken up? What if it was 3am versus 7am?” It works for us right now. When he’s a little older and I’m able to trust him outside of his room responsibly then we will remove the cover.
Never had that issue when my LO was still a toddler. She was just sleeping with us.
As toddler proof as my home is, I do not trust my toddlers to roam freely when I’m sleeping. It would be so dangerous in the event of an emergency. We just turned the doorknob around so the little flip lock is on the outside and have their baby cam in there so we’re still aware if they need us.
We have a baby gate on our toddlers door. the bedroom door gets shut (safer) but the gate is locked until she is asleep. we open the gate but keep the door shut when we head to bed. she is capable of opening the door. She has yet to actually leave her room when she wakes up in the middle of the night. My toddler has autism, and is also...a toddler. she unfortunately does not understand the concept of a fire escape plan yet. As someone who has lived through a total house fire (before she was born), and as someone who volunteers in RC disaster services, I def have a plan. Her bedroom door has no lock, it's also very easy to kick in. there is a rolling escape ladder in my bedroom, which is opposite her room, a fire extinguisher, and a fire blanket. All adults know where the outside ladder is (and is easily accessible), and it would go to her bedroom window if necessary. There is of course a fire extinguisher and blanket on the ground floor and outside as well. Safety kits that can handle massive bleeding are accessible at all those locations in the event of injury from breaking a window. I went on a tangent about fire safety, but your house burning down sucks just as much as you think it would--- I encourage everyone to at least THINK what your plan would be. The house fire plan I had thought up before the fire in 2019 went PERFECTLY and everyone, including all large animals and ALL important documents, were out in under 2 minutes from discovering my brother's bed completely in flames. Back on topic: The baby gate was installed honestly so I could keep her OUT of her room when needed. Doors stay open all day for airflow, and she literally cannot control herself from dumping anything she has access to 🙃 Locking it at night is just in the event she decides to throw open the door to protest going to bed...hasn't really happened yet. I don't feel good about literally locking her in her bedroom and her not even being able to look out of it, so instead everything else is baby proofed. If she got up extra late/early worst case is her dumping out toys in the living room, or gaining access to the fridge or pantry. Last fire thing: Shut bedroom doors at night. just do it. The fire Marshall literally took us to my brother's remains of a bedroom and told us that if he had shut his door before running out of the house, our house wouldn't have been a complete loss.
We have a gate on my toddlers door for safety! He would happily open the door and walk around the house if we didn’t and I don’t feel comfortable with that if we didn’t hear him, he’s not one to just creep into our bed and sleep with us. It helps him to know that his room is his crib and he has taken to it great! :) We also have a dog so again, it’s for safety through the night!
I put an electromagnetic lock on the outside of the door and wired it to a plug-in electric timer. That way we could lock the door for 30 mins while our kid fell asleep but still allow him to get out if he woke up in the night or when he woke up in the morning.
I shut the door and she currently can't open it but I will be putting a child proofing device on it so she can't leave at night. It is safer for her to be in her room while we are sleeping. We have a baby monitor and I go and get her the second she asks for me. She knows that I will come and get her so she doesn't leave her bed at night.
Instead of locking him in his room, we put a door chime on his door. We put door locks on the doors that leave the house, but not his room.
We have a baby gate installed on the outside of the regular door. It’s a taller gate. She can open the door from the inside by herself but still can’t get out. But honestly, right now she won’t even get out of the toddler bed by herself, even though she can.
We have a child lock on the knob for my 3-year-old's room. When she moved in there with her big girl bed, she had a problem with letting herself out and would roam around the house. I was really uncomfortable with putting the child lock on there until I spoke with a firefighter about it. His words really sunk in hard. He said if there's ever an emergency, they're not going to get out of the house on their own anyways. It's better to know exactly where they are if somebody needs to rescue them.
We have a gate on the stairs but t Our toddlers are free to move from their rooms either to come get us or to use the loo when they are able. They just can't get downstairs
It's wildly unsafe for a toddler to have the potential to wander the house at night. Our three year old has one of those child proof doorknob covers on the inside of his door. I just think of his room as a larger crib now. We'll change things when he's potty trained overnight.
We have a knob cover, so for all intents and purposes, he’s locked in. His door essentially opens to the staircase and we don’t have a gate there. We have a (sound only) monitor and get him whenever he wakes up, so I am not too concerned. He has a little song he sings: “Mommy, I need you; Mommy, I need you” and I come running. LOL.
My daughter isn’t locked in. Her door is closed for safety reasons. Also I have a 100lb dog that likes to walk around and whine at night. He’s walk in there and sniff her or nose her to wake her up like he does us. He’s at the end of life and is having issues. Having a door closed will prevent fire from getting in the room easily. So it’s a lot safer. Keeps extra noises out, her room is right next to the kitchen. My husband is up at 3am for work
Twin 3 year olds and we def have a chain on that door. They can open it the chain length and talk into the hallway if they want to (which they’ve never done). Those two work together. Not worth the chance of something going wrong in the middle of the night.
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We just have a tall baby gate on our toddlers door. We leave her a couple books in her room but the whole room is baby proof. We do not lock her door behind the gate because of a fire hazard or in case of an emergency.
Our toddlers room doesn't even have a door but if it did, I'd probably had lock it at first as a young toddler because his room is upstairs so it's more for safety. We already had the stairs gated off so yeah. I guess the only reason would be similar to what I said is for safety because some kids are super quiet and can just leave the room in the morning and like cause a dangerous situation. My son 5 now but even at 3 or 4 he just goes in our room and lays with us til we wake up.
My daughter is almost 3. Her room door is right in front of stairs (different level of the living room). It would be extremely irresponsible of me to let her leave the room in the middle of the night with the risk of her falling and severely injuring herself. We have a baby monitor with a built-in microphone, so we can communicate with each other very easily. There's not an ounce of abuse going on, it's a measure out of love and meant to protect her. We haven't potty trained her yet, but by the time she is night potty trained I think she will be going up and down stairs with more confidence and better balance.
I don’t believe in “locking in”, but we did put one of those wireless door alarms up so that a chime would sound in our bedroom if he left his room at night.