Can and how do you teach your child to manage the stairs?

[cupcake78]

DS is 15 mths, very tall and finding an interest in climbing. He is almost out of his cot, found him scaling it a few times and the stair gate is just another toy for him to climb over.

So wondering whether to teach him to climb the stairs on his own but not sure if its a good or bad idea and if so how have you done it?

Your experiences please

Yes, and around this age. Always supervised - lots of emphasis on not climbing the stairs alone, of course we have stairgates too.

Going up quite straight forward - just crawl-climbing up one step at a time.

Going down, we taught DD to turn round at the top and climb down slowly backwards. So theoretically any slips should just be a step or two..

dd sort of learnt to go up on her own, by going up on her knees.
we taught her to come down on her bum so she can see where she is going. she leant by copying us! she's 2.2 and can go up and down on her own

up the stairs crawling with one of us behind, down the stairs was "on your tummy, feet first, and down". We did stairs as early as possible, as I felt I would rather they knew how to manage them safely, than not. Didn't stop DD3 deciding that the best way to come down the stairs was to stand up, hold on to the banister, and slide down each step on her feet. Not too much of a problem except for when she didn't slide her hand down the bannister at the same rate, and swung down jungle-stylee into the wall .

we stair proofed boy young, as soon as he could crawl. We have muliple sets of stairs, none of them very long.
We did a lot of playing at going up and down stairs, modeling what he should do, guiding him through How and where he should be turning round and how to slither down on tummy feet first. Lots of reminders, lots of supervised stairs to start with. gradully reuced superviion level as he showed he could and would do it propery.
Crawling up stairs he semed to do on his own, less work needed, just practise. however we never had stair gates at bottom of any of our stair sets.

So how would I manage my open plan (stupid) stair case? Down on the bum or tummy ? It's wooden ond slippy.

We only had a barrier at the top of each set of stairs.

We taught our dd at around the same time to go up crawling on her own and then to come down on her tummy.

I was petrified everytime I saw her going down the stairs but we have never had an accident so far. Fingers crossed.

Both my boys were up and down the stairs at an early age, I only put a gate on their bedroom door incase of night wanderings (as the door is right at the top of the stairs).

I taught them to crawl up and to come down backwards on their tummy.

"babies go backwards" in our house. dd2 doesn't really do the main stairs - always asks me to pick her up - but had to stand over her and physically move hands and feet for her to show her how to manage the ladder to dd1's bunk bed (she was going up it the second we turned our backs then trying to come down forwards). now she can reliably do it and usually give herself a round of applause at the bottom

DD at 10 months learnt how to climb the stairs and does the same to come back down them. Although we have shown her about coming down them on her bum but she's too young to do that.

We'll re-inforce it as it gets older and will make sure she only does it when we're there but I think its kinda safer this way so that when the stairgate is left open by dp miraculously its not SO dangerous.

MERLY- tummy or bottom will partly depend on how long their legs are... IF they can't put feet on next step down while sat firmly on top step, go for tummy. Feet 1st they need to be able to push feet OFF the front of next step down ans slide bum down to where feet were whilst planting feet on new step.

we taught ours too. Although we had a stairgate, could not expect everywhere else to have the same and so wanted to be as safe as possible. Spent many hours sitting a third of the way up helping/watching my two DDs to learn to go up and (more importantly) go down.
Tricky balance isn?t it? you want them to practise so they master it, yet also learn to stay away from the top/only do it if there is a grown up helping. That is the hard part!

Yes you can. I'm disabled and couldn't carry ds up & down, so very early on taught him to do it himself, always with me below him to cusion the blow if anything happened, which it never did.

He went up on all fours, and when very tiny came down the same way. I did it this way too to show him, and because I would be safer to catch him that way.

We kept a gate at the top for quite a while, just in case he lost attention on the landing and didn't realise he was at the edge of the stairs, but quickly dispensed with a gate at the bottom.

BTW he never had that fascination with playing on stairs in other houses that so many toddlers have, I think cos they weren't forbidden to him.

DS wanted to climb the stairs as soon as he could crawl, so I let him. He's been climbing and descending the stairs on his own ever since, and is sensible about it. We did have to stop the coming down the stairs on your tummy for a while as he found that if you let go you could just body surf down the stairs in one go, which was fun for him, but not me

I will try DT1 out today but I am worried that DT2 will slide through the riser or back of the stairs. We have no bannister to speak of (they are custom made by the fellow who built the house and not at all child friendly). Any ideas on how I could block that gap for a while but without permanantly damaging them ?