Childproof Door Lock Up High: When They Learn to Climb

The deadbolt held for a while. Then one afternoon the front door's standing open, the chair from the kitchen is against it, and they're gone.

In r/Autism_Parenting, the threads asking which lock to buy start there. For one parent, the front door opens onto a main road.

Another's four-year-old got out of the front door as his sister was backing the car out of the driveway. A third had wedged a stick in the track of the balcony door and found it ignored or outsmarted.

That's what the lock is for. The parent on the main road says all they need is for their son not to get a head start.

If your child has beaten every lock at their own height, put the next one where they can't reach it. A lock up there buys you the time between the door opening and your hand on their shoulder, but every adult in the house can still open it in a second.

The simplest version is a lock towards the top of the door. Two kinds come up again and again: a slide lock like the GlideLok, and a spring-catch lock like the Prime-Line lock.

The two kinds parents put up high

The first is a slide lock that sits on the top edge of the door, like the GlideLok. One parent with an escape artist says it's the lock that slows their son down the most. No lock holds, they add, if he has alone time with it.

It can be opened from both sides of the door. Most locks mounted high can't be opened from outside while they're engaged, so a parent who gets home late after the house is locked up is left on the porch.

Another family has a slide lock on every exterior door and says that because it sits in the pressure of the door, it takes a little strength to slide over. A third put theirs on every door leading outside and reports so far so good.

A deadbolt moved up does the same job the old-fashioned way. One family had a contractor fit one at the top of the door. Someone in another thread suggests a deadbolt at your own eye level or higher, which you can unlock from outside with a key when you get home late.

The second kind is what one parent calls the usual answer: a spring-catch lock mounted high, like the Prime-Line lock, which is sold as a door reinforcement lock. To open it you pull the catch sideways against a spring, and that pull is the whole trick. Their seven-year-old can lock it but can't unlock it, despite knowing how it works.

A parent in a different thread, asked what lock to put up, answered with the same kind:

Even with a chair, our 7 yo cannot get it unlocked, but it's super easy for us.

u/midwest_scrummy, in r/Autism_Parenting

They've watched their daughter standing on the chair, knowing the motion, but it's the spring resistance that stops her. Be warned, they add: every guest leaving your house will need help getting out.

In a third thread, with the same style of lock, a non-verbal eight-year-old doesn't even try. The family's five-year-old can lock it but hasn't the strength to undo it.

What happens when they learn to climb

One parent asked it straight out. They were planning a deadbolt up high and worried their six-year-old was smart enough to pull up a chair and open it.

Height on its own gets beaten. That parent already had a swing latch mounted up high, but their son climbs up to open it.

Another has chain locks up high. Their kid can use chairs to reach high things and can unlatch a chain, and the parent is waiting for the day the two skills meet.

The spring-catch lock isn't immune either. In the thread that called it the usual answer, one parent's kids climb to reach it and unlock it.

With a lock of the same kind, one five-year-old had it worked out in under a month, dragging anything that would move over to it.

The same story turns up away from Reddit. A parent on the Straight Dope boards in 2012 had sliding-door locks mounted higher than either parent could reach. It worked until their daughter learned to pull a chair over or climb up a desk.

On Mumsnet, a parent's eight-year-old found a chair, stood on it and unlocked the bolt at the top of the garden gate.

In a 2010 written statement to a federal autism committee, a mother described adding hotel latches to the top of every door after the regular locks failed. Within a month her son had worked them with a long stick, a chair or a broom.

So nobody in these threads promises a lock that holds, and neither do we. What the parents who've been through it do instead:

• Mount it where a box or a stool still won't get them there. One parent with a spring-catch lock put it where a box or a stool wouldn't get their child to it. On most doors that means as high as the adults can still reach from the floor.
• Treat the chair as the alarm. One parent's daughter can reach the chain with a stepstool, but her going to grab that is the warning. The parent with a slide lock on every door says the same: they'll get a chair or get tall eventually, but hopefully by the first you've noticed they're up to something.
• Let the pull do the work once height stops working. The spring-catch lock is the one that held against a seven-year-old standing on a chair. But it also fell to a five-year-old inside a month, so it depends on the child's strength rather than their age.
• Put a chime on the door the same day. One commenter's three-year-old nephew used a chair to open a high lock, got outside and drowned in a neighbour's pool. Their advice is an alarm that goes off when the door opens, alongside whatever lock you choose. The parent with the escape artist has alarms on every outside door too. Any magnetic door alarm will do: one half goes on the door, the other on the frame, and it sounds when they part.

Why not a key on both sides?

The next step people suggest is a deadbolt that needs a key from inside as well as out. Two things go wrong with it.

The first is the key. One family kept a spare up high in the kitchen in case of emergency, and their ten-year-old climbed up on the counter, took it and let himself out.

The second is fire, and this is where a locked exit stops being a parenting question. Nobody official has ruled on a high slide or spring-catch lock in a family home, as far as we could find.

Lori Greene, a hardware-code specialist who writes the blog I Dig Hardware, says the International Residential Code has no written requirement about keeping anyone from wandering out of a one- or two-family home. What it does say, in the 2009 edition she quotes elsewhere, is that an exit door has to open from inside without a key or special knowledge or effort.

A national fire code's chapter for one- and two-family homes says much the same. Quoted in Fire Engineering in 2010, it bans locks that block the way out or can't be undone easily.

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's autism roadmap lists it as an option and adds in the same breath that it can be a fire hazard, so try other things first. A Minnesota fire marshal's office, asked about locking a person with autism in, said its investigators have found people who died in fires with keys in hand. It offered a door alarm as the cheap alternative.

A hardware supplier commenting under Greene's post never installs a deadbolt keyed on both sides in a house and puts a high-mounted lock up instead. Back on Reddit, the parent with the chain locks says it plainest: anytime you're locking people in, it presents a fire risk, so check the codes where you live.

Whatever you put on the door, every adult in the house has to be able to open it at once, without hunting for anything. Ask your local fire authority before you drill into an exit door. They're the only ones who can answer for your house.

Which one to put up first

Start with the slide lock if anyone comes home after the door's locked. The GlideLok opens from either side, and the family with one on every door leading outside says so far so good.

Go to the Prime-Line lock when your child already climbs and height has stopped working, and tell every visitor how it opens before they need to leave. Mount either as high as you can reach from the floor, put a chime on the door the same afternoon, and ring the fire authority before the drill comes out.