Climbing on/jumping off couch and kid furniture... do you let you let your kids?

[peanutter]

We've tried different things, like letting them go for gold leaping from other things (outside things) and burning off as much steam as possible - it really doesn't make much of a difference.

I suspect it's as much of the achievement as anything else - he likes us watching him do his little daredevil things, and while I don't *think* I've encouraged it, I can hardly be surprised given how much DS1 takes after me, and given what my preferred activities (skydiving, white water rafting, abseiling, etc) are. Naturally, we give him plenty of attention from other things - but he LOVES jumping and climbing, ad he's rather good at it, frankly, so it's understandable that he wants us to watch him doing them ... Giving minimal attention to it and moving him onto other things is lovely in theory, but doesn't achieve much in application for us.

Also, one may take into account other factors, like the last person to break the trampoline was ... me ... and the last piece of furniture to be broken was DH and my bed. Twice. But that's for an AO thread What can I say, we're an adrenaline filled physical family ...

My kids are very physical kids - and while they don't mean to be destructive, it can be. We're still trying to figure out strategies for having quiet times and noisy times, and gentle times and rambunctious times, which don't stifle their personalities, and aren't just us screaming at them or physically stopping them from doing things.

If it was as simple (in our household) of having rules that they can jump on these things but not those things (indoor, outdoor, purpose specific, whatever) then we'd all be living very happily on this front. But that just isn't working here yet.

So we're still working on it

There have been some bumps and bruises and collisions and scrapes, but no actual concussions or broken bones or broken furniture (other than of my doing...) and we're all just figuring out what works best for our own families - like every other aspect of this parenting malarkey.

If it's bothering you, try another strategy.

If the strategies aren't working, rest assured that there's precious few children still jumping off furniture as they get older - the child:furniture height ratio lessens over time and ceases to be fun. And those of us still jumping on beds at conferences last weekend are rather fabulous to know, and our parents are no longer held accountable for our behaviour. Much.