Cot to bed????

[burtie2u]

Our son is 2.4 and can now climb into his cot, but so far not climbed out?
The thing is DH wants to convert his cot into a bed before DS climbs/falls out the cot and hurts himself. We spoke to DS about this yesterday and he seemed okay with sleeping in a big boy bed, but is there any advice from parents that have done this stage?

we moved ds to a toddler bed at 18 months because he got too big and was able to get in and out over the side of the cot.
we "hyped him up", saying we are getting a big boy bed now, got him new bedding and he was fine with it from day one.
I was worried at first that he would get out during the night and wander through the house, but he didn't.
we will move dd to a toddler bed at a similar age, she is also quite tall.

We actually left DS with his existing bedding when we converted it from cot to bed, so that everything felt familiar. And the first few nights we had a quilt on the floor in case he fell out, but he didn't, or else he got back in so quietly we never heard him!

But lots of people suggest the "letting them choose new bedding" as a way to encourage them - it probably depoends if your DC likes new things, or hates change!

we took one side of our 2.4 ds cotbed last week and so far every night he spends between half to one hour getting in and out, opening the door giggleing and shouting (we have a stairgate on the door) pulling all his clothes out, he even pulled the chest of drawers over so we have had to fasten them to the wall, playing with everything and trying to get himself dressed, hiding in the wardrobe etc!!! we have taken all the toys and books out but he still messes about, but he does eventually tire and get in bed and sleeps all night, although last night it took dp to really shout at him before he got the message, we are going to try and bear with it and hope the novelty wears off. Good Luck!!!

We got my ds a full size single bed last Wednesday. I was really worried about it - he's 2.5 and since we ordered it about a month ago, we've been going on about how he's going to have a big boy's bed etc etc and how great it would be. And he'd been adamently saying he didn't want one and he wanted to stay in his cot!! So next Wed when it arrived and we dismantled the cotbed, I thought it would be a disaster. In fact, he has been absolutely fine. He's only got out two or three times and each times and we've taken him straight back to bed which he's been fine with.

One thing I would say is that when we converted our dd's cotbed to a bed, she fell out every single night (we had duvets on the floor to break her fall!!) and the night we put her in a full size single bed, she hasn't fallen out once. That's the reason we went straight from the cotbed to the single bed with our ds and cut out the middle stage of converting the cotbed. If your little one wriggles around a lot at night,cotbeds are very narrow and quite easy to fall out of!

Good luck.

We moved DD (2.1yrs) into a bed recently and it went quite well, probably took 3 nights to get back to her normal sleep pattern.

We didn't tell her about it until the day we did it, we got the flat pack bed out after her midday nap and she 'helped' build it and putting the bedding on etc which she loved. That night she cried when we kissed her goodnight but got over it within an hour, by night three she was going to bed happily.

She hasn't fallen out yet and we haven't put the guard rail on that came with it. She can get in and out herself but she has never got out by herself in the night yet but just in case we have a gate on her door now.

we moved DD into her junior bed at 16months, she has never liked her cot and always prefered sleeping in the bed with us ( i thought she wanted to snuuggle me, but no she just liked the bed!) she loves it and sleeps without a peep all throught the night, i think it depends on individual childrens sleeping habits/pattern, when deciding the next bed stage.