You're still talking about state, yes? In either case you see a flight of stairs, you start executing "climb the stairs" and that continues until you are no lon

You're still talking about state, yes? In either case you see a flight of stairs, you start executing "climb the stairs" and that continues until you are no longer climbing stairs. It seems to me that "climb one stair as long as there are stairs" is a conceptually simpler definition than "climb one stair and then climb the stairs if there are still stairs." I think my point still is I don't see how you're differentiating between these procedures in your daughter's mind— why you're assuming that "up" means "I need to climb all of these stairs" rather than "I need to climb this one stair in front of me." (If indeed it makes sense to model human behavior either way at all; it probably makes the most sense to think of it more as an event loop...)