No, little Kitten. Gravity is not your friend.

[unixknight]

Katie (known to us within the family as the Kitten) is my littlest, at 18 months.  She also has precisely -zero- fear of altitude in any context.

It was Kitten who performed an uncontrolled descent down the basement stairs about 6 months ago because... she just really, really, really wanted to be down there.  (No injury of any kind, because she has very diligent angels watching over her.)  (And yes, there was a baby gate.  momma was going through it and that's when she discovered just how fast Kitten had become)She climbs on absolutely everything she can, and we have since removed the baby gate from the stairs because she was trying to climb *over* it to get down the stairs.  We have since taught/guided her to be able to get up and down the stairs safely on her own, and she delights in doing this several times a day now.

Kitten also likes to be on chairs, tables, stools... anything she can climb on.  Her one true frustration in life is a surface she can't reach.

Last night, she bounded out of her high chair expecting her brother to catch her.  He tried, bless his soul, but she was quicker than he was.  And that's how she bit her tongue.  Less than a half hour after that she was climbing back up to that chair...

So for all those whose children are climbers, I offer both my sympathy and extend a request for advice, if you have any.  Kitten is my 6th, but by far the most daring thus far. 

Edited April 3, 2019 by unixknight
typo

[anatess2]

Super cute kitten!

My eldest climbed out of his crib before he learned to walk.  Impossible?  I thought so too were it not for the Occam's razor explanation of how he ended up crawling on the floor.  Like kitten, he sets his sight on something up high and does everything he can think of to get there.  We left him be.  He ended up with a broken elbow at 4 years old after he decided to jump off the swing at its highest swing point.  That didn't stop him.  By the time he was 12, he was jumping from the rooftop to the tree 5 feet away for grins and giggles and doing his homework up a 50 foot pine.  The more he climbed, the better he got at it.  And the more I tried stopping him, the more he doesn't want to tell me anything so instead of stopping him, I remind him to use his head and not do anything stupid.  Everytime.  Even to the point of nagging.  He rolls his eyes but then I tell him - either you use your head or you don't climb.  Pick one.  Then he got interested in girls and that was the end of climbing.

[unixknight]

13 hours ago, anatess2 said:

Super cute kitten!

My eldest climbed out of his crib before he learned to walk.  Impossible?  I thought so too were it not for the Occam's razor explanation of how he ended up crawling on the floor.  Like kitten, he sets his sight on something up high and does everything he can think of to get there.  We left him be.  He ended up with a broken elbow at 4 years old after he decided to jump off the swing at its highest swing point.  That didn't stop him.  By the time he was 12, he was jumping from the rooftop to the tree 5 feet away for grins and giggles and doing his homework up a 50 foot pine.  The more he climbed, the better he got at it.  And the more I tried stopping him, the more he doesn't want to tell me anything so instead of stopping him, I remind him to use his head and not do anything stupid.  Everytime.  Even to the point of nagging.  He rolls his eyes but then I tell him - either you use your head or you don't climb.  Pick one.  Then he got interested in girls and that was the end of climbing.

Thanks!

And that's hilarious.  The dawn of puberty solves so many problems.  If only it didn't introduce so many new, scarier ones...

Sometimes kids know when it's time to take off those training wheels and just let them do their thing, and sometimes they don't.  As parents, we try to anticipate which is which but sometimes the kids have to learn the hard way.  To be honest, I think that's the best teacher, provided the "hard way" doesn't result in too serious an injury.  My second oldest had to learn how to drive a car intelligently after he rolled one 6 times in an empty cornfield.  He and my eldest daughter were unscathed by the grace of God, but it was enough to teach him a valuable lesson. 

[NeuroTypical]

We had a niece who liked to run away from everyone at every chance.  She was like 4.  Clothes were optional - there'd be bath time, then "Where's niece?", then the sound of giggling running off down the street.

So we took her to a big open space with gentle hills and nothing to see for miles around.  She immediately took off, and nobody chased her.  After like 3 minutes she turned around - she had made it a few acres.  We hear occasional sounds of crying and begging drifting to us on the gentle breeze, but we see her, she's fine.  It took her about 20 minutes to put away her pity party and melodramatic screams for help before she finally walked back. 

She didn't stop running away after that, the only thing that changed was she put more thought into making sure her pursuers would have sufficient motivation to be the panicky ones from there on out.