if my almost 4yo DD2 is still sleeping in a cot bed?

[Rookiemummy2018]

DD2 will be 4 in a few months. She still sleeps happily in her cot (which is one of the bigger ones with a 140cm mattress) and we have kept the bars up. She has never really complained or tried to climb, although she is tall and perfectly capable of doing it. She can be very difficult at bed time, will fight sleep and keep herself entertained singing or playing with her cuddly toys, but still happy to be inside the cot really. Is it time to switch to a bed rail? Have we left it for too long?

My DC is 3y7m and still has the cotbed sides on. They sleep 12+ hours a night and are perfectly happy. They still wear night nappies so don’t wake for the toilet. My older DC was 3y9m when they moved to a bed and the transition went brilliantly, 1000 times easier than when my oldest moved to a bed at 22 months!!
Don’t rush it if you don’t want to! We’ll probably remove the bars later this summer.
And you can’t train them to be dry at night so I wouldn’t worry about that - it’s to do with the production of a hormone that surpresses the production of urine at night, it happens at anytime between 2&7 - you just need to wait for them to be dry for a few mornings in a row and then try without the pull-up.

Take the bars up, but put some cushions on the floor.
DD2 was in a cot bed, no bars, until she was 6.5 as she was small for her age and in a small room, so we wanted to wait until she could be in a high sleeper safely.

My almost 3.5 year old is in a same size cot bed with the bars still on. It's massive. He doesn't want to climb out and he likes the security of the bars. He is under assessment for autism though and isn't potty trained so not an issue for the toilet at night. If she's ready to be toilet trained during the night take the bars down if she's not leave them till she is. I think some of these replies are a tad ott every child is different. Have you asked her if she wants the bars taken off? If she's not a great sleeper it might not help!

My boy was the same. He asked for the bars to be taken off a month before his fourth birthday so that's when we removed them. He needed a bed guard though as he moved around so much, hence why we hadn't moved the bars.
Honestly, just because other people did it at 1 or 2 years old doesn't matter if your child is 3 and still in one.

Can I just say this is completely cultural. In my county children are often in cots until they start school (age 6) and they are fine.

Argh, country

good tip crackercrisp

thank you all again. You launched me into being more proactive about it all - I feel it is time, even if that means a few broken nights!

I hadn't realised sepeate night training was such thing until I read this thread. I'd take the bars off and get rid of the night nappies. Toilet last thing before bed and then first thing in the morning. There will probably be a few accidents for the first couple of weeks but after that it's done. I genuinely think all night nappies do is confuse them.

Whatever works for you is right!

My eldest was in a big cot until she was 4.5 years old. She was an excellent climber who'd had no difficulty getting out at will since before she was two. In fact, one of the reasons she liked the cot was that she could use it as a sort of gymnastics climbing frame . And we liked the cot because it fit in the room, which a larger bed would not have done.

She got a bed when a bigger room became available which would accommodate a bed. Also we wanted a full-sized bed so it could be used as a guest bed whenever grandma came to stay (dd coming back into our bed with us in order to let grandma have a bed).

For us it was all about what was practical at the time.

My DD moved into a single bed at 4.5yo, but I had to put one bed rail because she would fall off, only one side though. She stopped using night nappies at 5.5yo, when she finally went dry for over three days and we took it off. Apparently night pull ups are not an issue until they are 7 (I mean for gp referral), as it all comes down to whether they are producing a certain hormone that reduces urine production at night (or something along those lines).