Can you give me your toddler sleep tips?

[Toofondofcake]

So my DD1 will be 2 in November and I had not planned in changing her cotbed to bed for a while yet however she can now climb out of it which has forced my hand as yesterday she climbed out and fell.

So we've converted it to a toddler bed but we just had a horrendous night last night, she slept great the first two hours then was up until midnight running around in her room, shouting at the stairgate on her bedroom door - and waking her little sister who is 5 months. I tried sitting next to her bed in the dark but it didn't seem to help and we tried to do the not making conversation thing when putting her back in bed.

I could cope with this by itself but with DD2 have 2-3 nightfeeds I'm running on almost no sleep as DD1 was still up at 5:30 this morning despite having hardly any sleep.

Help! Any tips welcome. Can't really just leave her to it though without baby getting no sleep.

[golfmonkey]

Oh god I feel for you, and terrified of this exact scenario with my 21 month old who may change to a bed soon (also have an almost 5 month old who feeds 4+ times a night). No tips but putting a comment so the post stays high up. Hope someone has a solution x

[FATEdestiny]

It's a behaviour issue, not a sleep issue. So is/was the cot climbing. Rather than it 'forcing your hand' and making you make the change into a bit before he was emotionally ready, you could have just dealt with it as a behaviour issue.

I'd put him back into the cot, he's not ready for a bed and your problems will be multiplied out of the cot.

So how do you deal with other behaviour issues where he does something dangerous?

You tell him off! You act disappointed. You give positive instant rewards (stay in your cot and I'll give you a biscuit when you wake).

The move from cot to bed should be dictated by the parent. It needs to be when the child is emotionally ready (cot sides give a suprising amount of security to the child) and behaviourally ready (so knows that bedtime is sleep time). Being physically able to climb is not an indicator of readiness.

[Mybeardeddragonjustdied2016]

Get dh to see to toddler while you have the baby. My ds was waking to be bf but when dh went in to settle him he slept through on the third night!!

[InsaneDame]

I agree with FATE, I don't think emotionally some children can deal with the change that early on. I've just put DS2 in a single bed from a cot about 2 weeks ago at 2.5 years old and he completely understands that it is bed time and he hasn't tried to get out once (he even stays put in the morning until we get him!) I honestly think the longer you are able to leave them the better. He had never tried climbing out and we only moved him as he seemed to be getting a bit big for the cot and also he saw his big brother was in a bed so wanted the same - he had been asking for months bit I wanted to make sure he understood it all a bit more. Needless to say we do still have a stair gate on his door just on case and he has added shutting it himself onto his bedtime routine so he knows getting out of bed won't get him anywhere! For the first couple of bedtimes he did get a little upset saying 'I'm not big, I want my small bed back', which reenorceds Fate's theory about the bars offering security. He soon got past it though when we made a big deal about his lovely special tractor bed (I also agreed with him that he wasn't big but still had a lovely new warm bed to sleep in).

Good luck whatever you do.

[Toofondofcake]

Thanks for your opinions there ladies. If you think this is more of a behaviour issues then fair enough however as a safety risk I'm just not comfortable with her getting out of the cot that way. It's a fair height for a toddler to fall and could end up with her breaking her arm or something like that if it carries on, when I was a toddler I fell off a chair and broke my arm so it's totally possible.

I'll keep looking for solutions to helping her stay in bed. Thanks.