oh help PLEASE what do i do with a 1 year old who has learnt to climb on the sofa???

[FrannyandZooey]

help major disaster here
i can't leave the room
well in fact i can't turn my back
he can't even stand - there's no way he's safe on the sofa
he then climbs on the window sill! about 3 foot up
help help help help help
he is fast
and CROSS when i take him down
it's a nightmare

F&Z - DS does this too - he's 13 months, climbs everything. Mounts large items of furniture to see how high he can get. There is bog all you can do apart from make him a bubble wrap helmet. Disagree with the playpen suggestion (DS climbed out of it in five minutes). It is worth buying a climbing frame for outside though - climbing in itself is a good skill, just wrongly applied to the sofa. If he can confidently and skillfully climb he's less likely to fall off and break himself!

FRanny - I too am at the 'how do I make breakfast??' stage

I can't do ANYTHING! Not even take him to the toilet WITH me as he tries to go head first into the bath!!!

He has only just started sitting up realiably in the last few weeks and how he wants to climb!!!

Don't panic F&Z! He sounds fab and active and that's great!

My DS2 could certainly climb up and down stairs by 13mo. He did it very safely - he was (is) v active.

In fact when he was about 12 mo he was proficient at the stairs to the big slide at our rec. He must have been able to come down them too as he didn't try the slide itself till about 14mo. I remember DH telling me and I was amazed as DD was 2.5 before she attempted it.

We did have a stairgate but never at the bottom (wouldn't work in the house) and I don't recall a problem so it must have been OK.

He could also climb out of his cot about this age - he suddenly appeared in our room one morning . He was the only one of our 3 even to attempt this but as he did it quite safely (never fell) I didn't worry too much. In fact I didn't worry at all

I echo those who say it is a good thing in the end - DS2 has by far the best balance and gross motor control of all my 3, even tho both his siblings are older than him. He always had a massive awareness of how big he was in relation to tables etc he was under (if that makes sense) as well.

yes, mattress on the floor and let him climb.. he'll only fall a couple of times!!

DS is a MAJOR climber, so I feel your pain. He got very very good at it very quickly though

Get a nice thick rug to put by the sofa, it'll look a bit better than a mattress.

Babies bounce pretty well, honestly. As everyone says, put him in his high chair whilst your making breakfast - give him some toast to chew on, or soemthing, anything to keep him occupied really.

It does get better, then you have something else to worry about.

Can you flip the sofa over onto its side during the day, so the back is on the floor and the seat bit is vertical. You could sling a rug over it and sort of hook it under the top to make a tunnel (fun for crawling through?)

does that make any sense?

When the dss have gone to bed you can flip it back up for a proper grown up seat again.

durr, not flip it onto its side, you'd have to be a muscle boaund freak to flip a sofa onto its side

Flip it onto its BACK I mean.

And I probably don't mean flip either, LOWER CAREFULLY WITH CARE AND FOCUS.

tautologyshitwits.

Just turn it over.

I have a couple of climbers too. When they were at their worst I had a room divider, so there was lots of space and interesting toys, but nothing too dangerous to climb on. Also, as we had wooden floors I got those interlocking rubber mats. Not the nicest to look at but it was a temporary measure.

...maybe he could still climb up onto the top of the seat then?

Gawd this is worse than those sections in an IQ test where you have to turn a malco E around in your head to fit in the possibly or possibly not inverse of the E

[brain strain]

Can you turn the whole sofa upside down so it looks like a triangle?

Or just pick the damned thing up with your super human vegetable strength and fling it into the garage.

I don't know. I have been singularly unhelpful I think.

Please ignore all sofa turning suggestions F&Z.

have you got the tallest sofa in the world? do you have a spiky floor? if it's no to both those questions - why does it matter if he falls off the sofa a couple of times? My DD taught HERSELF very quickly how to get back down off the sofa after she landed in some odd shapes! I CAN'T catch her all the time - and by the time I've taught her one safety manoeuvre she's worked out the next best way to scare the living daylights out of me!
Welcome to toddlerdoomhood, it's a wonderful place full of surprises and excitement and You Will Love It

You have my sympathy - my 14 mo old was standing on the sofa clapping the other day!
We've got a playpen which I put him in if I need to go & put on washing or go to the loo, but to be honest, that's as much to stop him climbing on the dogs as the sofa!
He's got 2 big sisters who usually shout if I'm not in the room & he's doing something daft.
I did have one of those birth to toddler Fisher Price chairs but he rocked himself over so he was like a snail with his chair on his back! He found that hilarious, me less so...
I think the playpen is the only safe answer - I know some people think they're like prisons, but he needs to be safe & we need to wee sometimes! And even if he doesn't like it, at least he'll be safe! (you could always put the playpen within sight of the tv to take his mind off your mindboggling cruelty in putting him in there! )

teach him to climb backwards off the sofa. I have a 14 month old who has been climbing since about 12 months (nightmare!). Our best strategies have been to move as many potential climbing items as possible and to teach safe exit strategies (backwards off bed, off sofa, down stairs, etc.).

I agree with above posts.... climbing will happen no matter what ...

dd was like this, had some pretty interesting bruises. we taught her how to climb down backwards, tossed a few scatter cushions around, had a playpen etc. still didn't go anywhere without arnica the whole time...

getting this on my threads i'm on list .

Franny I sympathise. A lot!

My ds can't get on the sofa yet without using me as a step, but he can climb on the foot stool thingummy and on my rocking chair {ALBS does 4 hail mary's and crosses herself many many times). He is pretty good at getting down safely - i try to always get him off anything backwards, feet first, and today when he learnt to climb the rocking chair he also discovered that if he climbs over the arm of it, he is pretty close to the sofa so he leans on that and then tries to get off backwards between the 2. Oh god. Sometimes he does it ok, other times a leg gets stuck, once he fell.

I am most worried he'll manically rock the chair and crash his head on the wall (dd has a habit of rocking so hard it moves back even if i pull it out so I cannot guarante where it will be).

Argh!!! This is all new as dd was such a placid little baby (making up for it now at 6 - argh the tantrums and arguments).

aitch... they laughed at my first aid kit at toddler group... til about the third time ds1 almost knocked himself unconscious/cracked his head open/sustained a minor flesh would, now they don't laugh but the playschool teacher has been heard to remark 'I couldn't cope with your son Pink' which will be interesting as he's starting playschool in 2 weeks

I'm starting to wonder if i'm just very neglectful though as we've always had solid floors and i've always considered couches fairly safe toddler climbing frames...

yes, we've got oak as well. no baby photo complete without a bruise on the bonce.

Parent of a climber is a special club. It is like parent of a non sleeper! Only certain people can really epmathise.

steleger - absolutely - and with dd1 unfortunately we were in both clubs!

I remembered last night how ds used to climb onto the sofa and walk along the back before jumping off the arm. It gave me heart attacks while it lasted but the novelty wore off after a while and he hasn't done it for a few months now. Same with climbing onto the windowsill or kitchen counters (he still does occasionally but can at least get down safely now and he isn't up and down them all day like he was a few months ago).

This too will pass

"why does it matter if he falls off the sofa a couple of times?"
because he would be falling with his head from about 4.5 foot up (he climbs onto window ledge and stands)
he would PROBABLY fall on the sofa and roll and then fall again, but he crawls along the window sill and then might fall off the EDGE and go straight on the floor

oh i don't know, why does anything matter?
i must say having been away from MN for a little while i had quite forgotten the constant undertone of "you are a fuckwit and we know best" that inhabits most threads

anyway thanks all
the double mattress is my friend
unless spectacularly unlucky now, he should bounce and roll and fall on a futon
yay

Hello Franny and baby L

(was a member of both clubs with both ds and dd - wonder if they are linked? not going to jinx it by saying ds is now sleeping through the night)

My daughter learnt to climb on the sofa at about 11 months, for a week her forehead was covered in bruises, then she learnt to climb down backwards. strap him in a puschair if you don't have a playpen - or a highchair.

LOLOLOLOLOL have i got the only daredevil around?

he can climb down backwards but it is soooooooooo funny to jump forwards!!! he is 23m old.