If You Can Climb Up, You Can Climb Down

post by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2024-07-30T00:00:06.295Z · LW · GW · 9 comments

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9 comments

A few weeks ago Julia wrote about how we approach kids climbing:

The basics:
  1. Spot the child if they're doing something where a fall is likely.
  2. Don't encourage or help the child to climb something that's beyond their ability to do on their own.
  3. If they don't know how to get down, give advice rather than physically lifting them down.
  4. Don't allow climbing on some places that are too dangerous.

I was thinking about this some when I was at the park with Nora (3y) a few days ago. She has gotten pretty interested in climbing lately, and this time she climbed up the fence higher than I'd seen her go before. If I'd known she'd climb this high I would have spotted her. She called me over, very proud, and wanted me to take a picture so that Julia could see too:

She asked me to carry her down, and I told her I was willing to give her advice and spot her. She was willing to give this a try, but as she started to go down some combination of being scared and the thin wire of the fence being painful was too much, and she returned to the thicker horizontal bars.

We tried this several times, with her getting increasingly upset. After a bit Lily came over and tried to help, but was unsuccessful. Eventually I put my hands on Nora's feet and with a mix of guiding and (not ideal) supporting them helped her climb down to the lower bar. She did the rest herself from there, something she's done many times.

This took about fifteen minutes and wasn't fun for any of us: Nora, me, other people at the playground. But over the course of the rest of the day I brought it up several times, trying to get her to think it through before she climbs higher than she would enjoy climbing down from.

(I think this is an approach that depends very heavily on the child's judgment maturing sufficiently quickly relative to their physical capabilities, and so is not going to be applicable to every family. Lily and Anna were slower to climb and this was not an issue, while Nora has pushed the edges of where this works much more.)

9 comments

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comment by nim · 2024-07-30T01:54:36.808Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

If You Can Climb Up, You Can Climb Down

Mostly true, but the edge cases where this is untrue for adults are interesting:

  • Climbing up may damage the thing you're climbing (rock, tree) and render it impossible to return by the same route
  • Steep and slippery surfaces can be more dangerous to hike down than to hike up, because gravity is in your favor for arresting uncontrolled upward motion but exacerbates uncontrolled downward motion
  • Without a spotter, we tend to have better line of sight to things above us than to things below
  • If fatigue or injury is incurred on the climb up, one's physical abilities may not be sufficient for the climb down
Replies from: Gunnar_Zarncke
↑ comment by Gunnar_Zarncke · 2024-07-30T11:06:43.721Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Yes, and Jeff's point is that you should learn to anticipate this. The real claim is 

If you can climb up, make sure that you are confident that you can climb down too.

Replies from: Raemon
↑ comment by Raemon · 2024-07-30T17:09:18.814Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Yeah I think mostly the title of the post isn't quite the right encapsulation of the thing.

Replies from: jkaufman
↑ comment by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2024-07-31T12:03:13.040Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

The title is what I say to little kids when they have climbed somewhere and want me to carry them down. I would prefer to be using phrasing that was literally true, but overall this feels good enough to me? Do you have suggestions for better phrasing?

Replies from: jkaufman
↑ comment by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2024-08-09T17:37:31.634Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

@Raemon [LW · GW] I've been playing around with "you climb up, you climb down".  This communicates essentially the same thing, but as "this is how it works" and not as a promise about the climber's abilities.

Replies from: Raemon
↑ comment by Raemon · 2024-08-09T17:45:41.743Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Neat, makes sense.

comment by AnthonyC · 2024-07-30T02:32:04.426Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Do not climb up that which you cannot climb down.

See also: Up is optional, down is mandatory. Except in canyons.

comment by NoSignalNoNoise (AspiringRationalist) · 2024-07-31T01:35:54.381Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

How do you determine where it's ok for her to go barefoot?

Replies from: jkaufman
↑ comment by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2024-07-31T12:05:44.925Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

We generally don't require our kids to wear shoes. The exceptions are places that require them (ex: school) and places where it's seriously unsafe (broken glass all over)