He’s been opening the handle doors since about 8 months, but we don’t have any at home, so it hasn’t been a big issue. Today, though, we were at my mom’s house in the kids’ toy room. He looked me straight in the eye and turned a round knob to open the door. I closed it, and he did it again.
He also understands how locks work and can undo them, but he doesn’t yet have the finger strength to turn them all the way. But he will soon.
I thought I had more time. My 22-month-old nephew can’t even open round door knobs yet .
Now I need to go to the store and get those knob covers. Can’t risk waiting for Amazon.
He’s just under 33 inches tall. If he’s opening doors at 14 months, how long until he figures out the handle covers?
I’d also put that chain lock or another child-proofing device on your front and rear doors that he can’t reach or figure out. I recently heard a tale here or in the Mommit sub about a child escaping his bed and rushing to the streets at 5 a.m. while his parents were sleeping (luckily, he was recovered uninjured).
I’m not sure whether to be envious of you or relieved that my two-year-old still can’t. She locked herself in her room the other day during her nap, and it was a very anxious 10 minutes until I jammed the door open because she didn’t know how to turn the lock back on (we have “older” knobs with no working safety push hole on the outside).
I also assumed I had more time. At 2! LOL!! She can use handle ones, but doesn’t understand turn = open .
When he was about 2.5, he locked himself in our bedroom. He couldn’t figure out how to spin the lock into an unlocked position. We had to sneak one of our phones under the door, FaceTime him, and instruct him to step away from the door toward the window so I could kick it down. We discovered that our doors are quite weak. At the age of three, he can open doors, although he is not very interested in it.
I feel you. My 10-month-old started climbing everything this week. She’s scaling things and then launching herself off them like a little monkey. We had joked about waiting to see if we had a climber, and now here we are. We’re about to re-orient the whole living room to make it safer and bolt EVERYTHING down. We were already bolting things down, but now it’s like, “This has to happen NOW.” I also thought we had more time.
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