Natural teacher or natural pupil?

I taught my god-daughter to climb downstairs yesterday. She's been able to climb upstairs for a while now, but never got the hang of the downward motion (with which most of us are too familiar), which has meant that she has to be rescued (frequently) once she reaches the top of the stairs. She seems to want to be at the highest point at all times. So if you plonk her in the middle of a room she will inevitably head towards the nearest staircase, or failing that the nearest sofa, chair, table or whatever else she feels capable of scaling. And no matter how many times you bring her back to earth, she continues to yearn for the skies.

So she and I had reached the top of my long staircase and she was heading speedily up the last two steps on my landing. Then she turned around and requested a lift to the bottom again. Instead I offered to show her how to do it herself. All this was said in sign language, you understand since my god-daughter is not yet capable of understandable speech. Her Lexish is great but her English needs some work.

I put her on her bottom on the uppermost of the two steps, facing me. Then I lowered her legs to the step below and half-lifted her so that she was standing on the lower step. Then I suggested that she bend her knees. No matter how many times I exhorted her in my best ski-instructor voice to 'ben zee knees' she was happier tanding. So I lifted her to the lower step. She looked delighted to be travelling in this manner, but I wasn't satisfied with her accomplishments (perhaps I am ready for parenthood) and wanted her to be able to do it on her own. When I turned back after chatting with her mother (my best buddy) she was kneeling on the top step with her bottom facing the void below and waggling one leg precariously over the edge. She felt around with this leg for a while until she managed to find the step
below and she lowered herself gracefully onto it. Mission accomplished. And she had done it entirely on her own, in a manner designed by herself. I am so proud! (Slightly less proud of the dirt that she managed to cover herself in merely by crawling on my un-hoovered floors!)