Stairs

[Nauvoo]

Stairs are the big thing for DD2 (9months)!!! always wanting to climb them.  We didn't have stairs with dd1 until she was almost 2 so she had no problem mastering them quickly.  DD2 seems to have caught on that you can't just sit back when climbing stairs, which is good but she still has to be accompanied up the stairs.  I can block them if needed but for the most part I'm hoping that the more she climbs them the quicker she will learn to be safe on them and the sooner she'll learn how to go down them with out falling face first.
Just wondering how old other LO's were when they mastered the stairs?

[koe2moe]

I wonder if she climbs on and off sofas, too?  We taught DS to climb down always legs down first backwards, so he has never falled flat on his face.  On the same token, perhaps you can teach her to climb down legs first? 

I never thought to let DS try coz our last apartment had spiral stairs which were nightmare for kids and I fell down and torn my ankle myself!  We only let him walk up when he was already walking.  HTH

[~inbalance~]

I think both DS1 and DS2 were 18mos when they could walk up and down unassisted, but I don't recall if/when they could do it crawling.  We didn't have stairs with DS1 until he was older, like you and DD2 so he got them quickly.  I think with DS2 we kept them completely blocked until he was closer to 18mos.  I don't think I taught him to go backwards down them, I just never took the chance and we had gates at the top and bottom.  But we never had any problems that way and once he was old enough he mastered them quickly as well.

[koe2moe]

Meant to say that we only had gates at the top.  By around 2, DS was walking up the stairs and opening the gate for us   we told him not to use the stairs alone and he listened

[*Becky*]

wow - this is DD atm, it is all she wants to do!!