Climbing

My monkeys have almost turned into actual monkeys, and I think I'm going to go crazy if it doesn't get better anytime soon :gah: They will turn 3 in a few weeks and they won't stop climbing anything and everything! If it has height to it, they are all over it. I've tried lots of no's, time outs, taking toys away, nothing works. I know it's probably a lost cause until they get a little older, but does anyone out there have similar experiences and any advice? I'm tired of living in a whole house jungle gym!

 

I don't have any solutions...but I certainly feel your pain. Our boys are just over 2 and cannot stop climbing on anything and everything! I was hoping this would end soon but your guys are 10months older and still climbing! Our pediatrician had told us our goal for the year was to try to prevent serious injuries...should be challenging! Good luck!

 

When our guys started climbing everything we could we tried to put up obstacles so they couldn't get to certain furniture. For instance, we wrapped super playard gates around the entertainment center and an end table. And I used camping mat straps to lash the dining room chairs together so that they couldn't pull out the chairs and climb on the table. As for our small dinette set where they eat in booster seats, there was only one other chair at the table (myself or DH would sit there to help feed them) and for months after every meal we would turn the chair upside down on top of the dinette table, which prevented them from climbing on that table. A while back we stopped putting that chair on top of the table and they never try and climb on it anymore. And for the holidays we unlashed the dining room chairs for dinner and never bothered tying them back together, and even though they know the chairs will easily slide out now, they haven't tried to climb them to get on to the dining room table. There were some things we just couldn't keep them off of like our bed, and for a while there were some bonked heads and occasional nose bleeds while frolicking on our bed, but they got better about that too after a while. GL, I know its frustrating!

 

We're still dealing with this and they are almost 4... sorry

 

Can you make a place for them to climb? A friend put away her kitchen table for a while and installed one of those step 2 slide/swingsets in her dining room. Another one of my friends still has one installed in one of her extra rooms. We wouldn't have been able to do it in our old place, but we would be able to do something like that here.

Just someplace that they can climb freely, and then just direct them to climb where it's okay to climb?

 

Agree with Bex. If you can give them something to climb safely, they might go for that over the unsafe things.

 

This is what we do, too....when we can't get outside to play and climb on the outdoors things, we bring their little tikes slide inside and that really helps.

 

I don't have room to have anything that's "okay" to climb on in our house, so, I let them climb on the "safer" things. They bounce on our couch and climb on the back of it all the time. They bounce on their toddler beds. They climb onto the changing table. Things I prohibit is sitting on my kitchen table (just cause it's gross), and climbing bookshelves. I took the bottom two handles off their bottom two drawers in their dresser because they were standing on them to reach their stereo. So now they just pull the drawer out and stand on the edge. :crazy: two creative, devious, little toddler minds versus me...it's a no brainer who is going to win, and that ain't me! :lol:

I did buy my 3 youngest (5 yr old and 2.5 yr old twins) all bean bag chairs for Christmas. Now they launch themselves off the couch and into the chairs. What can ya do?! ardon:

 

We have one climber and one non-climber. We had to get extra tall gates to keep them in their room because Rachael kept climbing over the gate. Then she learned to climb over the extra tall gate by pushing toys over to it and standing on them. So we removed all the toys (or anything else she could stand on.) Then she figured out how to pull her self up an over the extra tall gate. I give up!!! Here's 2 videos...one of our climber and one who can't climb anything!!

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2929039990331

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2929044470443

Good luck!
Shannon

 

Thanks to all for the replies on this. Everything has pretty much confirmed my suspicion that only time will make the climbing any better (I hope.) We had already created a separate playroom for them (our old office was quickly sacrificed for this) and they have a few things to climb on in there that we brought in from outside as Christmas approached and we knew Santa would bring better climbing toys for outside. We try to make sure they get as much outside playtime, too. The climbing is just going to be with us until they get old enough to know better

 

I have to laugh because while reading your post, I found my son standing on top of our Step2 play kitchen!! My boys are also crazy climbers so I have lots of symapthy for you!