Like many parents, I’m guilty of letting my kids get away with certain things that I swore I would never let them do (like the occasional dinner picnic). My children were not going to bounce on couches, let alone vault over them and then ride the arm rests as if they were mechanical bulls. Nope, my children would use couches for their sole purpose: sitting.
Well, then I had three kids and sitting on couches is the least of my worries. We have been blessed with a son who could be the poster child for psychomotor overexcitabilities. Leo, our eldest, is in constant motion and climbs everything. He spends his days quite literally climbing the walls. Over the last six years, we have tried - unsuccessfully- to curb the climbing but the reality is:
#1., Leo isn’t even conscious of his climbing, and
#2., The child needs to be moving.
This is our normal.
I recognize that he is not aware of it, and I understand his need for it, and I am so glad he’s here and not doing this in school and getting in trouble for it, and yet… I’m also tired of wiping filthy footprints off of my door jambs and molding. Are you sitting there trying to figure out how Leo manages to get his filthy footprints on my door jambs? Here’s a clue:
Silver lining here: brown post is very forgiving of dirty footprints.
And here’s another:
He shimmies up until his bum touches the top of the door frame. I kid you not. It’s a skill that few possess.
So what’s a mom to do? Well, we compromised. Leo can climb the post in our family room (seen above). It is brown and therefore doesn’t show footprints, plus it does resemble a fire station pole. Leo can also climb the door jamb in his bedroom, with the understanding that we will periodically ask him to help us wipe them down. And I’m trying, as always, to let some of this stuff go. This too shall pass, and crazy as it sounds now, Schizz and I will miss having to say, “Leo! Please get down and climb the door frame in your room!!” nine gazillion times daily.
I keep this sign in my kitchen to remind myself there are more important things than a clean house (which, as mom to three kids and a dog, I will never have again).
And, as for those couches? We’ll sit on them in other people’s homes.
***
The energy which makes a child hard to manage is the energy which afterward makes him a manager of life.
~Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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Caitlin Fitzpatrick Curley
Cait co-hosts The Homeschool Sisters Podcast and is co-founder of Raising Poppies, a community for parents of gifted and twice-exceptional children. Cait is also founder of the Family Book Club at My Little Poppies, a fantastic community of book-loving parents and the Gameschool Community at My Little Poppies, a vibrant community of gameschoolers.
Cait is a contributing writer for Simple Homeschool and GeekMom. Her work has also appeared on The Huffington Post, The Mighty, and Scary Mommy. You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram
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Ha! My little guy does all this! I was the same way as a child. I even tried to figure out ways to climb onto the roof! Finally, my mom got me in to gymnastics and I could finally fly. I tried gymnastic for my son, but he was too impatient to wait in line for his turn and wanted to keep moving. While he very much loved it, he needed more. After watching my son use our living room as an obstacle course and jump from the couch, to the ottoman, onto a chair and vault over our kitchen counter, it finally occurred to me that this child needs to be in Parkour. He loves it and boy do they move A LOT!. Not sure if they have Parkour in your area or if Leo would be interested - just a thought. Oh, I had my son watch some Parkour Youtube videos first and he got very excited and requested to take classes. 🙂
Too funny! We tried gymnastics when Leo was three and it was great for a month and then a major fail. We tried again at five and it went much more smoothly. We are just now debating switching between gymnastics and karate. We shall see! That kid needs to keep moving 🙂 I’ve never heard of Parkour but I need to google it right now.
Sonya says
I’ve just found this post - my (2e) 5yo climbs on everything too. I took a photo the other day of him sitting on top of his bedroom door. It’s definitely a crazy ride!
I’ve signed him up to try a circus class, he didn’t cope with gymnastics because it was too busy and loud.