Help! How to stop dd3 from climbing out of her cot?!

[TheDrswife]

We are at our wits end, last night she was up basically all night, climbing straight back out when returned to her cot. Does anyone have a magic solution??

What sort of solutions were you hoping people would give you to keep her in the cot-strapping her to the mattress?!

Put her in a bed and teach her how to stay in it like you would with anything else that you want to encourage- praise, positive reinforcement, rewards etc

Yes this is unfortunately what you need to do. Her safety is more important than you having an evening at that age. It’s what I do.

You can make her new bed more appealing and personal as well. Let her choose her own duvet cover, coloured sheets etc so she knows it is hers. We also let ours ‘decorate’ the bed head with stickers.
They had new pjs for the ‘moving to a big girls/boys bed’ occasion and chose 1 cuddly to have pride of place sitting on the bed.
It made them excited to go to bed on day 1 and in the mornings they ‘helped’ make their bed (putting the cuddly of choice back on the pillow etc)so it looked nice for the subsequent nights.
Of course, we still had all the safety things in place (stair gate on their door and at the top of the stairs and a nightlight on the landing)🙂.

It’s completely natural for children to gain control of their bladder & bowels, mist western children are in nappies far longer than other parts of the world where Elimination Communication is practiced to some degree or another. Children will also eat vegetables happily if they are given them as soon as you introduce solids, whilst their tastes will change over time and they’ll suddenly go off some foods then start eating them again, weaning babies to bland sweet mush is the main reason most children won’t eat veg.

All these thing, independent sleep, continence, eating solids, etc, are developmental milestones that happen naturally if you give children the support to learn, but western child rearing practices work against natural development, which is why so many children and babies struggle to ‘perform’ to modern schedules.

Here are some real sleep experts:

https://cosleeping.nd.edu/

https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/durham-infancy-sleep-centre/

When one of mine was three he would say goodnight and take himself to bed. Three year olds do not need to be in a cot or sat with until they fall asleep. That is just babying them. Babies can self settle at an earlier age.