At age two, Lee-Anne Maier?s son, Theo, was still in diapers, but he could climb to the top of the 12-foot net climber at the playground down the street. Maier quickly got used to all the concerned looks from other parents at the park. ?He was such a small kid that he looked like a baby climbing that thing! But I would just say, ?Hey, good job!? because I was so certain he could do it.?
His other favourite trick was to grab the frame of a doorway (one hand on each side), wriggle himself up until he was dangling about six inches off the floor, and hang there like a monkey, clamped on for as long as he could.
Even kids who aren?t climbing the walls of your home, like Theo, usually go through a phase around age one or two where they want to climb everything, says Mathilde Duflos, a developmental psychologist in BC. My own daughter wasn?t a big playground climber, but she quickly learned to escape the crib, thrilled in climbing up the chairs to stand right on top of the dining room table, and she wanted to play ?climb Mama??where she would hold my hands and scale me?as many times as I would let her.
?There is a huge component of personality to it,? says Kaitlin Rickerd, a paediatric physical therapist in New York and the creator of Milestones and Motherhood, a popular Instagram account about children?s physical development. ?But climbing is hugely beneficial.?
Why toddlers climb 
Duflos explains that climbing is ?a new way for kids to explore the world, and explore their body...