How do you teach a baby to back off the bed?

I don't know if there is any big fancy way of doing it. The only thing I do is each time he gets off the bed I turn him so his butt is facing the edge and have him slide off on his belly. I hope that doing this each day will teach him the safe way to get off, but he's 1yr old and he still tries to walk right off the edge of the bed.

If it's really important to you I'd make a game of it and do it over and over.

Otherwise, never leave the baby unattended on the bed.

I second what dotcommama said. My ds would slide down the side of the bed holding onto the blankets and I'd hold onto him. Eventually he could do it by himself. (He has never fallen off the bed!)

We did the same thing to teach him how to crawl backwards down the stairs (always supervised), so he would automatically turn around at the top of the stairs and not run or crawl toward the top of the stairs and accidentally fall down.

We did the same thing except we also added the phrase "feet first" and said that while we were turning him around. Now all we have to say is "feet first" and that reminds him to turn around.

I showed my ds how to turn around and put his feet on the ground off of a low futon around 7.5 mos. I repeated "feet first" while he was doing it. He could do it on his own after I showed him two or three times! It might help to start on something where the feet actually hit the ground easily (futon, step, etc.). Good luck!

We modeled it alot for ds, showing him how to go down feet first, all the while saying "turn around to go down" - and, we put the mattress on the floor (just in case).