Walking and climbing

It is fascinating to watch two little people develop and to see them work on what they want to master.  Christopher crawled before Alexander, because Alexander was only interested in walking.  He would walk if you held onto his hands.  Both of them could take a few steps and walk holding onto something like the toy shopping cart.  But this week Alexander figured it out and is walking all over the house.  He is a perfectionist, though, and gets upset when he falls.  He doesn't know how to stand up unassisted, so when he falls he either needs someone to stand him back up or he has to crawl over to something and pull up.

Christopher, the pragmatist, figures he already has a means of transportation, so why mess around with walking?  He has decided to climb!  So far he has climbed onto the small chairs we have, the shelf for the baby toys, and the bench that Ryan stands on to play with his toys.  This last one I was not happy about, and Ryan isn't either.  I thought his toys would be safe up there for quite a bit longer. 

Having read a lot about Montessori education over the past six months, it really makes me think.  Here we have two children with the same genes in the same environment who want to learn to do different things.  I am sure that eventually Christopher will learn to walk and Alexander will learn to climb.  So why do we try to make all children learn the same thing at the same time, instead of giving them the freedom to master whatever they are interested in at that time?