Help! I have a climber

[gastrognome]

DD2 is just one and has lately started to climb all over the furniture - chairs, sofa, tables, you name it. She climbs up and then stands there teetering and clapping her hands in triumph.

I don't mind her exploring and I have baby proofed the areas of the house she has free access to, but I am worried she is going to climb up somewhere dangerous or fall off and crack her head. She will even push chairs across the room so she can climb up and gain access to other furniture.

I'm not sure what to do. DD1 went through this stage but was older and could understand me better when I said "no". DD2 doesn't have a whole lot of common sense yet.

Any ideas how I should handle this? I just don't see how I can keep her within my line of sight 24/7, and obviously I can't remove all the furniture either. I have thought about a travel cot to serve as a playpen, but I can't keep her in there all day and as soon as she is out she will have access to the furniture again.

Help!

I'm afraid that there really isn't a whole lot you can do except what you have done - babyproof as much as you can and be vigilant. It wouldn't hurt to have somewhere to put her (e.g. travel cot or playpen) for times when you have to e.g. go to the loo or answer door, but at she will no doubt protest hugely about it (mine did), so it was only ever a brief safety option. My DD2 was a climber and yes, she did hurt herself a few times (worst was when she managed to escape from her high chair aged 11 months, crawl across table and divebomb onto her head on the floor (that was an A&E visit, but they don't have fontanelles for nothing, she was fine). I had to take the side off her cot aged 17 months as it was unsafe with her climbing - one of our best investments was one of the rollerblind type stair gates which we put across her bedroom door so she couldn't wander around at night - she was adept at getting over most stairgates, but never managed to climb that one as it has no purchase points.

I realised mine was climbing because he was after certain things, so I made sure I moved those things out of sight and it solved the problem.
Eg I always kept the kitchen table clear, didn't take toys away and put them on high shelves, etc. That didn't stop it altogether but it made it happen a lot less often.
I did also have a playpen for emergency use for the moments when he couldn't be watched.

Sounds familiar! DD has just turned one and is a complete little monkey climbing all over the furniture. We don't have a playpen or anything but one thing I've found really useful is to allow her a little bit of freedom and kind of watch her to see how she gets off the sofa for example (totally ready to catch of course), and then if she does it well, ie backwards, feet down and gently sliding off, I really praise her. Of course she does still have to be watched 24/7, but it gives me a bit of reassurance that IF I wasn't looking she'd be able to get down ok.

I'm sure you have but have you fixed all chests of drawers to the wall? Mine like to pull out the draws and use them as stairs to get to higher places.

We had a travel cot filled with playballs for this reason - being put in this baby jail safe place while I had to nip to the loo / cook / whatever was presented as a treat . It worked for a few months at least, by which point he understood "no" a bit more/

our playpen was known as 'baby prison', I remember ds2 sitting in it saying plaintively into a toy mobile phone 'Hello? I'm in prison.'

oh i remember dd3 being like this.

Isn't if funny how different each child is? THe others didn't do it ever!

No there isn't a lot you can do, except prepare to guard carefully for the next few months! I think the novelty wore off quite quickly. I used to lift dd down saying no. and she'd repeately climb straight back up, i'd keep lifting her down and she'd be giggling histerically because you're right at one they have no understanding.

THank god my 11mth ds has only just learnt to crawl! life will be a lot calmer with him.

Oh dear, sounds like our DS... He was climbing at 10 months before he could walk! He is now 18 months. We are trying to take him to the playpark as much as possible and we're about to start some gym classes which will hopefully give him chance to climb. Agree with a previous comment about giving some freedom to climb - we've found he now actually has a pretty good sense of height and is good at turning around to climb off things (even though he has taken a few tumbles too, I've not been far away!!)

We do set boundaries which you just have to reinforce repeatedly and eventually some of them do set in... for example, he is allowed to stand on the coffee table to look out the window, but not allowed on the window sill. He is allowed on the kitched chairs, but not on the kitchen table. We do keep the bathroom door closed though because he likes to climb on top of the loo and then onto the window sill and that is a little too much for me!!

I also used to put cushions on the floor in places I thought were dodgy.

Setting boundaries may become easier in a few months time.. in the meantime, watch like a hawk, allow some freedom and encourage safe climbing which should teach some good habits. Good luck! ;)

DD1 climbed everything and anything.
You turn your back for one second and she was off.
Hiding every pen and interesting ornament in the house, slightly reduced book case climbing. However ,everything else remained fair game.
Heaven help DH if he wanted to cut the hedge, step ladder
Loft ladder
Big ladder for waterproofing the chimney
Ie. the higher and more dangerous looking the climbing opportunity the more likely DD1 was to try and get to it.

In the end we gave up bought her a climbing frame and got to know every park in a 20 mile radius.
Fortunately she climbed incredibly well and didn't attempt anything she couldn't do.
Just as well when she graduated to trees way beyond anything I could rescue her from.
Fortunately she has grown up not to be particularly sporty so hasn't taken to rock climbing properly.

And yes I did resort to a travel cot to answer the door etc when she was small.
That she didn't escape, her main cot she climbed out of by 18 months and it was just safer to leave the side down.

Sorry OP not to be more help. For some DCs seems to be compulsive, you just have to live with it. No simply meant DD1 tried harder to climb things when you weren't looking.

DS is the same. Not much you can do. Put all stuff away, put catches on drawers and cupboards. Gate a room and make it as safe as possible and use it as a big play pen. I do find that he climbs more when there are people around to show off too. DS is up bookshelves and on work tops all the time if I'm in the room, but if I leave him and come back he is always just playing nicely on the floor or sofa. It is worth teaching DD how to do things safely, like coming backwards down stairs and off furniture, if she get on a work top by climbing on a chair that she needs to get down the same way. DS has been like this since he started crawling at 10ish months. He is now nearly 2 and it's getting worse, not better!

We couldn't/can't stop ds2 from climbing so we just taught him to get back down safety. (he was climbing the coffee table and sofa at 9 months even though he couldn't walk)

We move everything that might hurt him and just let him get on with it now.

I found the more we said "No" the more he wanted to do it. So we just make things as safe as possible and give him no attention/response and he soon gets bored and moves onto something else.

Thank you for all the replies. Glad to hear we aren't the only ones in this boat!
Will keep on encouraging safe climbing and check that things are fixed to the wall where appropriate. And then just wait it out I suppose!

Ladies! Apologies as this makes for absolutely ghastly reading but it immediately made me think of this thread. Perhaps those of us with little climbers - however young - should take heed. I'm going to shorten all the blind cords today. xx

news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16175909

I have made sure our blind cords are absolutely inaccessible for little ones, though I did read that simply cutting the loop so it hangs down as two strands is another preventive measure so i will probably do that too.