Teaching my 1yo to use the stairs

[DownWithBreadsticks]

My husband and I cannot agree on this. He thinks I’ve made a major error, I think it’s sensible.

I have a 1yo. They crawl at lightning speed and cruise around happily but they’re not walking yet.

I have taught 1yo to climb stairs. I’m always always right behind them. They do it well. We’re working on climbing down.

Husband says that this is madness and stairs should always be met with a firm “no”. He thinks I’m inviting disaster.

I think that they’re always obsessed with stairs and it’s best to teach them properly. We do have stair gates.

I have done this with all 3, but my husband didn’t WFH with 1 & 2, so he wasn’t around as much to see. (I’m not a SAHM, but I work compressed hours to have a day at home with youngest on Fridays)

I have googled it, but I can’t find any definitive advice about stair-teaching.

What’s the MN consensus?

YABU: Stairs are so dangerous. WTF were you thinking encouraging a 1yo to climb them?
YANBU: Stairs need to be learned and the sooner the better.

A friend of ours had 4 DC, no Stair gate and just taught them to go up and down.
We had stair gates but also taught DC to go up and down stairs but under supervision to begin with. I remember one weekend away with lots of friends where there was a huge stair case and we just watched our 1year old safely climb up and down them - others were quite surprised, but she was really happy!!!

Haha mine was like this!

From about 8 months , I couldn’t have stopped him even if I tried so it was safest to teach him how to do it safely (ie crawl to go up and tummy to go down until they are a bit older)

I understand his concern, but they do all find and climb stairs eventually, whether or not you teach them. You can tell them "no" all you like, it won't stop them trying. I mean, how effective is "no" to anything a 1 year-old does? Even if it stops them in the moment, it won't prevent them from trying again.

If it makes you feel any better, our 1 year-old can not only go up and down the stairs very confidently, she even knows how to navigate the top of the stairs and never tries to throw herself over the edge, despite lack of stairgate! (We supervise, of course.)

Personally I am of the school of thought that they should be allowed to have a few very minor falls. I'm hardly going to let our child tumble down the entire flight, but when she was just starting to get a bit over-confident and lost her footing on the bottom couple of steps I was actually a bit pleased and she's been far more cautious since.

How does he think the other 2 magically developed this skill @DownWithBreadsticks ?

I’m somewhat sniggering at the other things he may become aware of now he’s working from home… what other horror stories and home/child lies can we tell or show him?

points for the best ones we can get him to
believe?

We’ve got a climber(!) so we started letting her use the stairs around the time she was learning to walk, she‘s two now and goes up and down really well, the stairs are blocked off normally though unless we’re with her, as the only issue that we have is we’ve got dogs so I always follow her up and walk a step in front coming down, just in case of any barging around!!

Funnily enough though my DH always carries her up and down, but I think that’s more for speed purposes rather than safety!

Mine were early walkers and were sprinting down hallways at 12 months (and no, they didn't turn into great athletes). They just strode up the stairs and were tall toddlers so they could manage the steps. We weren't too keen on that so we had stair gates at top and bottom. One of them used to get me to open the stairgate and go up with him to the landing to practice the tricky bit without a handrail as he seemed determined to be able to do the whole thing on his own asap.

I’ve had both my kids in Victorian houses and have never been majorly into baby proofing - you’ve got to remove it sometime right?! So we’ve had a gate at the top of the stairs and one on baby’s door so they can’t roam around if they get up in the night but that’s about it. Our stairs are quite narrow and steep and she needs to know how to navigate them safely. The stories I’ve heard when people have forgotten to close the gate and the kid has no skills - that’s the scary bit!

When DB was a baby, there was no bannister to attach a stairgate to, and an open side he could fall off, so he was taught how to use the stairs as soon as he was mobile.

I used the same approach with my two despite having stair gates. There's always a chance that baby can follow or slip through a gate opened accidentally, so it's best that they quickly gain confidence at using stairs safely.

The only incident we had was because DS1 caught his foot on the stair gate at the top. We now know that he's dyspraxic. Both of mine rocketed around crawling for months before bothering to slow down to walk.

That was my thought too, I don't recall 'teaching' mine to climb stairs, they just did it and if necessary I would stand behind them but a fall from the first 2 or 3 was a great warning to them, we had a stair gate that started on the third step.

ive been learning my baby girl for the last month. She is 8 months old. Once she showed interest and went up the first step. Once she could roll and 4 months we have practiced feet first off the sofa and I do the same for coming down the stairs. Surely the earlier they learn the less likely hood of an accident

Yes, another one here who taught lo's to use stairs before they could walk, much better to teach them how to do it safely rather than them get in an accident if you get distracted for a few seconds. I taught them to climb up with all fours, and to come down front ways on bottoms and weve never had any accidents l, we don't even have a stair gate

@Bromptotoo it's coming down safely that is the teaching bit