The Birth of babygator

With six young kids, our home was always moving. Someone needing a snack, a diaper change, or a rescue from whatever trouble they’d found. Baby gates were something we thought was one of the few things that helped us keep the chaos under control. But, at just 13 months old, our youngest son Kyson started climbing any and every gate we installed. What was supposed to keep him safe had become something he could defeat in seconds.

We tried everything. Taller gates, different brands, new designs, even greasing the bars. Nothing worked. So we stopped focusing on the gates, they were static and needed something to stop climbing, as they were not doing enough. We started studying our kids' behavior. We watched how they climbed, where they found leverage, and what gave them confidence. Our toddlers were more than ready to put every prototype we had to the test and after several defeated walks back to the drawing board. We finally stopped them from climbing the gate completely, with our safe top mounted design and flexible rotating apron. We were able to remove the foot and hand holds that toddlers rely on. The climbing stopped, our kids and home were secure from his curious exploring and was quashed for a couple more years.

Once we saw it work, we realized we weren’t the only parents dealing with this. Baby gates haven’t meaningfully changed in more than a century, and none of them have ever been designed to address the real problem: stopping the climb before containment is lost. That’s why we created babygator, the first behavior aware safety system for interior gates. What started as two parents trying to protect their own kids, has grown into a mission to stop this dangerous ignored problem. We want to bring a modern behavior-aware safety solution to families everywhere.