What to do about a climber?

[SuzySunshine]

Anyone have any ideas? A is now climbing on EVERYTHING, luckily I've already secured all furniture to the wall so that is not a hazard but I'm really concerned she is going to fall. Yesterday she did this:



I have had to take the chairs to her small table and set away because she uses them to climb up on things. I've had to take the legs off of her music table for the same reason and if she climbs up on her kitchen again we're going to have to make it taller.

Does anyone have any ideas other then a sedative for me - she's going to give me a heart attach!

[GrayMatterWife]

I have no advice. I had a serious climber, too, and he STILL does it. My only suggestion is, make sure your health insurance is up-to-date and get to know the ER staff well.

When DS was about a year old, I was packing up our place to move to STL. DS had been having a grand old time, playing among the boxes. I was busy in my thoughts and sweeping. All of the sudden, I heard him laugh--in a very self-satisfied way. But something about it was very...off. Instinctively, I spun around and realized why the laugh seemed "not quite right"--it was being projected to me from above my eye level. (And I'm pretty tall.) DS had scaled a big stack of boxes and was precariously standing atop them. A fall could have bloody killed him.

He looked really shocked when I screamed and grabbed him.

[mommax3]

All my boys were climbers. In looking at your chairs, the first thing I would do would be to turn them around so that the (tall) backs were against the table edge. She will have to work awhile to get them turned around the right way in order to get on the table, so at the very least, it will buy you some time to get to her. If you don't want to do that, scoot the chairs all the way in so that she has to pull them out to get up.....again, that will buy you some time and the noise of the chairs scooting will alert you to what she is doing.

Try to give her opportunities to climb safely, either outside or in. We had a toy that was not very tall but had a short slide attached and getting to the top of the slide took some doing.

It is a good opportunity to teach her that no means no, although that is a frustrating task.

Keep in mind that it is a fun thing for her to do because she has just figured out that she CAN do it. The glamour will wear off eventually.....none of my boys has climbed onto the table in several years!

[rainbabies]

All my kids were-are climbers. Especially ds. They still find anything and everything I have up high. I found, with the table and chair anyway....tuck them in tight, use some light rope...like clothesline rope...loop around one leg of each chair all the way around table. Only tying tightly to one chair. Leave slack to tie othet end of rope to "permanent chair" At meal time untie the opposite side. Pita? Yes. Not beautiful on nice furniture? Yes. Very effective? Yes! Good luck with other stuff!

Sally has great advice.

Bryn was a climber and an early one at that. She was completely lacking any inhibition or sense about it. Drove me crazy. I can remember her falling one time but not injured. Anna and Evie were climbers too to a lesser extent. That photo you posted looks very familiar!

I would do what Sally suggested. At one point, for a few weeks, I put all of our dining room chairs down on their sides and under the table.

[Deebs]

We have a climber as well. His most recent excursion is to climb to the middle of the piano and start dancing on it. All of my chairs are completely on top of my tables. I also bought a pen (yes, I'm admitting this) so that when I can't directly watch him, he can be trapped. He hates it, but I know he's safe. Basically, I get nothing done and something happens daily that probably takes a couple of years off my life.

[spotty_dog]

LOL. She looks pretty nonchalant.

My theory with Eddy was that if he can have the opportunity to build his skill in climbing, figuring out how to do so safely and securely, then he will be safer in the long run. So I generally just tell him a reasonable rule like, "There's no climbing on the counter, you need to get down." And then let him climb down on his own, so that he gets good at getting down backward too. In your photo, the main thing that makes me a bit nervous is the shoes. I know Eddy is usually less dexterous in thick soles and more likely to place a foot wrong and slip.

If he's being particularly careless or messing around where there's more potential for injury, I tell him he needs to be careful because it "scares Mommy!" Sometimes now he will stop himself and say, "Scares Mommy!" Hopefully he is learning that he can trust his own judgment, but still needs to yield to the common decency of not doing nutty things, for mom's sake.

[mommax3]

I also bought a pen (yes, I'm admitting this) so that when I can't directly watch him, he can be trapped. He hates it, but I know he's safe.

When Luke started crawling at ~ 4.5 months old (back in 1995!) I bought a playpen and have not seen one in a store since then.....I have always been convinced I bought one of the *last* ones ever made. It bought me a little time as long as he enjoyed the toys that were in there, but he was climbing out of it regularly by the time he was 9 months old. It makes me laugh to remember it....he was so wiry and skinny and LONG! I had stacked baby gates all over my house during those years. It is a good thing we never had a fire! Once a college-aged babysitter came over, very full of her own opinions and ideas, and after she took a look at all of my baby-proofing, she asked me if I ever just told Luke "no". When I got done laughing, I told her that I was familiar with the word, but that in order to get anything at all done, I had taken drastic measures. To her credit, when we returned at the end of the evening, she apologized and said she now completely understood what I was up against.

At Luke's 6 month check-up, the nurse asked me if he could sit up. I said I didn't know. She looked at me like I was nuts, and I said that he sat in his high chair when he was strapped in, but I had never seen him sit otherwise. Exasperated, she took him from me and sat him on the exam table. His butt was on the table for maybe one second and then he was crawling away. She tried two more times, with the same results, and then she started laughing when she realized why I had said I didn't know. She said "I'll just check that he can...."

Sorry for the trip down memory lane, but oh my was Luke active. It makes for good stories now, but it was hard living through!

The story about the nurse is hilarious, Sally!

I had a similar experience with being asked if she could walk backwards. For a while she walked backwards every chance she got and by the time they were asking, it was so yesterday.

[MrsK]

If he's being particularly careless or messing around where there's more potential for injury, I tell him he needs to be careful because it "scares Mommy!" Sometimes now he will stop himself and say, "Scares Mommy!" Hopefully he is learning that he can trust his own judgment, but still needs to yield to the common decency of not doing nutty things, for mom's sake

A lifetime ago I dated someone with a potentially dangerous job (but possibly not as dangerous as DrK's work with psychopaths and inmates). He told me that he wouldn't do anything stupid as long as his mother was alive. Good life lesson.

[MrsK]

I bought a playpen and have not seen one in a store since then.....I have always been convinced I bought one of the *last* ones ever made

Oh, and I totally want a playpen for Baby K. I know it is probably not in vogue to keep kids in "cages" but when I was a toddler I loved my playpen. My brother did too. All of our toys were there and we were content to play in the pen together. In fact, we use to crawl *into* the pen. It seems that all the playpens on the market now are so tiny. There is no way a toddler would be content in there nonetheless two toddlers and all their toys. Of course, if you have a climber, the playpen is not likely to confine him/her.

[DCJenn]

We had a baby jail and it was fantastic. (until he and my nephew figured out that when they were in it together they could actually pick it up and move it to where ever they thought they needed to be)

Now- I have the Russian gymnast (caught him swinging from my bed last week) so I'm looking for gymnastics classes so he can work it out in a safe place. The flips off the bed scare me too much otherwise!

Jenn

[peggyfromwastate]

A mom of triplets I know put her knives on top of her refridgerator b/c her boys were climbers and she couldn't keep them off the kitchen counter where her knives used to be...

I don't have any advice, really. I always tried to stay really calm when they climbed up somewhere they weren't supposed to be, and then I had them climb down, too...

For climbing on the table, I moved the chairs away from the table, so the chairs were against walls, and then the babies would just climb the chairs and sit in them at least...

Mostly my kids pulled all the books out of the bookshelves and then climbed up them like they were ladders or something...

I'm not looking forward to all this coming up--

And Sally- I can not believe your Luke was crawling at 4.5 months.

[Phoebe]

My kids were all climbers. I pulled the chairs away from the table or turned them backwards so there was no where to climb. I also found that the more I reacted to it, the more it made them want to climb. I would tell them it wasn't safe a couple times and then just take them off the table. I think my middle daughter climbed mostly for our reaction. It became a game. She still does things like this and she is 5!

[spotty_dog]

A mom of triplets I know put her knives on top of her refridgerator b/c her boys were climbers and she couldn't keep them off the kitchen counter where her knives used to be...

The top of the fridge? That hasn't stopped Eddy since he was 18 months. (Bar stool or kitchen chair goes into kitchen, boy goes onto counter, fridge is easily accessible almost as fast as I can figure out he's up to something.) Our knives have been on the counter throughout his toddlerhood; fortunately he takes some directions well and "Sharp! Touch-no! Hurts babies!" is one of the few we managed to impress on him while he was impressionable. ("Hold hands in the road" is the other one that makes my life infinitely easier. Just today he was mightily tempted by a friendly cat across the street but emained on the curb.)