Play-Learn-Grow-Repeat

From Friday Mom – Erin:
When we were considering putting in an offer on our current house, I was concerned about the fact that the first floor has a number of single steps up and/or down in a range of locations. There’s a single step down from the dining room into the kitchen, and from the laundry room into the family room. There are two smaller steps from the family room down into the playroom, and a steep short flight from the front door down into our mudroom.

My concern at the time was that Rory would be unstable or have difficulty with them. I also feared that his friends might have similar difficulty. Fortunately, but for a few bumps and bruises, Rory sailed through our first summer in the house without much difficulty.

Charlotte, however, is a different story.

The problem with single steps is that Charlotte doesn’t really understand the need to turn around and crawl down them backwards. She is constantly on the move, and having to stop, turn around, and slide down the step backward takes far more time than reaching carefully over the step and sliding down to the lower level. Half of the time, this approach works just fine. The other half, she finds herself rolling sideways or otherwise tumbling down the step.

It has only happened three or four times, but each time it does, we feel horrible that we failed to convince her to turn around. We’ve asked her teachers at daycare to try to reinforce the need to turn around and crawl down backwards, but she will have none of it. The alternative is to start putting up more gates and doors, but with an almost three year old, that is not a particularly viable option.

So for now we’ll work even harder at getting Charlotte to spin around BEFORE heading down the stairs. Fingers crossed she catches on soon.