Mastering the Stairs

Dale encourages Adelaida to climb the stairs

A few weeks ago, we decided it was time to teach Adelaida to navigate stairs. We put her on the staircase, with a very desirable toy one step above her, and encouraged her to climb the stairs to get it.

Nothing happened.

Adelaida is standing on a book, but still can't climb the step

Adelaida is a very short little girl, so I thought perhaps her legs were simply too short to go up the stairs -- the steps are as tall as her hips, so it would be like me trying to climb onto the kitchen counter: possible, but not immediately intuitive. We used really thick books to make the step shorter for her (thinking that she'd climb onto the book, and then onto the next step from the book), but she really didn't get the hang of it.

Adelaida enjoys standing on the stairs

I wasn't too disappointed by this, since I think it's more important for her to learn to go down the stairs than up anyway, so we switched gears and tried to teach her to go downstairs. This was quite a bit easier for her and she quickly learned to go down a step, but only when she was placed in the middle of the stairs to begin with. When placed at the top of the stairs, she didn't know to turn around and would try to go down head first. We worked with her going down the stairs for about a week and she got better and better. She took several tumbles during these practice sessions, but none that caused serious damage.

Then, one day when we were practicing going down stairs, Adelaida had gone about three-quarters of the way down the staircase and then suddenly went up one step! I couldn't believe it and tried to get her to do it again, but it was a fleeting skill. I had seen her do it so knew that it was possible, but she wouldn't repeat it.

The next day when I put her in the middle of the staircase, she went down one step and then up three steps! She had a new skill and was eager to try it out. She probably went up the staircase four times that day. Suddenly, I couldn't get her to go downstairs anymore -- all she wanted was to climb the stairs.

I often put Adelaida in the downstairs family room to play while I'm working in the kitchen. I can't see her, but I can hear her making noise and generally check on her periodically when she's in the living room. I was cleaning up after breakfast yesterday and Adelaida was playing in the living room. I could hear her playing with her Legos so wasn't too concerned. I walked into the living room to give her some more food, and couldn't find her -- she wasn't in the living room, she wasn't in the dining room, she hadn't crawled into the sunroom! I didn't quite get to the panicking stage when I heard a little squeak, looked up, and saw Adelaida three-quarters of the way up the staircase, smiling and waving at me.

foam flooring pieces provide a makeshift gate and protection from the tile floor

We don't have any staircase gates, but have been using her foam flooring pieces as both a gate at the bottom of the stairs (it won't keep her from going up the stairs, but should slow her down!) and as padding at the base of the stairs so that, if she does fall, she'll fall onto foam padding rather than ceramic tile.