too late for a gate?

[kayra]

Hiya,
DS is almost 1-can't believe it!-a fast crawler and soon will be walking by the looks of it. He started crawling at 7 months and so has always been a very active, curious baby going over all the house and discovering everything everywhere. One point we toyed with the idea of getting a gate so that he would just play in one area but we just didn't and now we're feeling that maybe we've given him too much of a free reign and he's getting bored or restless because he's just wandering around the whole time. Sometimes he'll play in his room by himself of fiddle with something somewhere by himself but the vast majority of the time if we're not sitting down and playing with him he'll just follow us around. In principle I'm ok with that but as I said he's just seeming not happy with doing that anymore. So we're again thinking about a gate but DH thinks that it might be too late to introduce it to him and that he would kick up an almighty fuss. Do you think it's too late? I really would rather he sat and played/discovered more rather than hanging onto my legs so much of the time!
thanks

[clazzat]

I wouldn't have thought that it would be too late for a gate as such, but I know that both of mine much prefer hanging on to me than playing by themselves!  dd1 never had particularly free reign - we pretty much stayed in one room when she was playing - but dd2 has always been able to meander around downstairs, and they have both turned out to be pretty rubbish at playing independently.  I would say that dd2 is better at it than dd1, so I think it is much more to do with character than habit iyswim.

[15milner]

No, not too late I don't think.  We didn't put a gate on the kitchen door until 19month when he could get into the kitchen and climb a highchair to get to the fridge!! (I put it there on the day of DS1 birthday party to stop him getting to the sandwiches etc and it stayed.)

We didn't put a gate on his bedroom door until later when we suspected that he might climb out of bed etc and it's there to stop him wandering etc.  It's useful to have his room gated so that he has somewhere safe to be if I need it.  Guess it's not that different to having a door closed.

[Tansy]

Not too late at all. You may also find when he starts walking that he'll feel more comfortable in leaving your side as he'll know he can get back to you quickly when he wants. Plus there's a whole new level of exploration to be done for him at walking height
We have a gate to stop DS coming into the kitchen area as he would follow me everywhere and it became a real chore to try and stack the dishwasher or have the oven on etc. Now he just stands at the gate and rattles it

[kayra]

Thanks so much! That's really helped, looks like we're going gate shopping as a birthday present