Climbing & dismounting..

[Whothefuckfarted]

My 16 month old has mastered climbing up on the sofa, it's a little higher than normal sofas and I'm trying to teach her to get off backwards.. How did you do it effectively? Also how long before they 'got' it?

[PinkPepper]

I keep turning my son around so he has to go down backwards, he does it right about 90% of the time now. (He only climbs up if I'm there though at the moment so he's quite often using me to turn and go down - not sure what he'd do if I wasn't there)

[Whothefuckfarted]

That's what I have been doing, I guess it's just a case of repeat, repeat, repeat.

[BabyLabyrinth]

Yes, keep repeating it! DD was an early crawler/walker and was climbing on things from 9mo. I was convinced she'd fall badly when I wasn't looking. So we spent ages practising - I'd let her climb up herself, then talk her through coming back down. "How do we get down, DD? That's right, we roll onto our tummies and wriggle backwards." Even at that age she understood easily what to do, and it's a relief to know she can get down from anywhere by herself. She did fall a couple of times whilst learning, but never all that badly.

At 14mo she can now climb up the little IKEA stool with a step on it and onto the kitchen table. We haven't quite managed getting down from there yet!

[shewhoknowsall]

We have a near 15mth DS and have been doing this all week with him. He isn't walking but cruises around furniture and crawls so so fast. He's been climbing up furniture and beds (as he is quite tall) so we decided to teach him the proper way to get down. Basically we've been doing what you are doing but just x 100000. Every time he does it correct we all cheer and shout so he knows it's the right way. We have stair gates at the top and bottom so he can't get up but in my parent's house he flies up the stairs so now we are going to show him how to get down by sliding down backwards. It will a long time before we take our gates down but we feel it's better that they know the way to get out of situations rather than have them fall down or fall off something.
Our DD (now 5) was an angel and hardly no work at all - it's like having your first all over again with DS LOL

[PinkPepper]

yes repeat a billion times. my 1 year old got on and off the sofa safe yesterday, so glad he can do it, hopefully he doesn't forget!

[poocatcherchampion]

repeat repeat and we always said "climb down safely" so now we say it anywhere and she turns onto her tummy to slide down. worked really well.

[mamapants]

Just kept turning him feet first and explained it in words though he was def. Too young to understand what we were saying at the time. I would say he has been consistently doing it correctly since he was about 8mths. Although he no longer always goes down stairs backwards instead he stands sideways holding on to the bannisters and steps one foot down at a time.
He even goes backwards down hills and slides though so they definitely pick up the concept easily.