17month old climbing everything

[meepmoop]

Hi everyone,

My DS has worked out climbing onto everything even our dining room chairs. He keeps climbing up and dancing on them clapping his hands.

Is there anything I can do other than remove the content of my living/dining room. I've been saying sit and tapping the chairs or just taking him off over and over again

Thank you

Mine is the same age and doing exactly this. I don't know if I am doing the right thing but to be honest, i'm just letting him climb if he is not damaging anything. My logic is that if he knows how to do it safely, then he is less likely to hurt himself.

If he is climing on something I don't want him too then i will tell him no and put him down. I'm also taking him to the park or soft play as often as i can to let him learn that it's more fun to do it there.

I'm hoping it's a phase. For a while he was wanting to do nothing but empty everything on to the floor, but he seems to be over that particular fascination too.

I agree with what @MeOldChina said. I let my son climb whatever he wants obviously not if it's dangerous like drawers or something. But basically I just let him do his thing. He's become quite strong and has very good balance. I allowed him to fall, bump himself here and there and because of it he's learned a lot about what's safe and what isn't. He's very stubborn so I just got tired and said fine climb wherever you want. He got over it real quick and I noticed the more I let him do and go wherever he wants it gets boring to him and he stops doing it. He currently is obsessed with going into the downstairs toilet. I let him. I've locked the toilet and put the brush away. He's still fascinated and I'm just letting him do his thing. I was his hands after he's got out and leave the door open. Hes been doing this for about a week and just now I noticed he's stopped going in. Must have got bored thank god. He's one btw.

By locked the toilet I mean I've put a little lock on the actual toilet so he can't lift the lid up.hes 17 months too! I say just let him climb, he might fall but he'll be fine and that's the only way he's going to learn that climbing might mean falling.

DD did this from about 11 months. I just put her in grippy socks and made sure she knew how to get down from everything safely.

At that age we let DD get on with it unless she was in danger. Now she can understand reason a bit better (at 2.3) we tell her she's too big to be standing on tables, and to sit on chairs properly. We can tell her we'll go to the park for climbing later/tomorrow.

I wrote nearly the same question as this 11 years ago!! Ds1 (and the ds2 and ds3) were nightmare climbers. I followed the advice as given - make the area safe, let them get on with it, take them loads of places for climbing. It was a phase that they all went through and now ds1 has very little interest in physical activity, ds2 is afraid of heights and ds3 is exceptionally competent at any climbing and balancing activity.