16 month Houdini - HELP

[laudaud]

DD is 16 months old and last night climbed out of her cot. She has not been sleeping well for the last week following a long haul flight so she isn't too keen to be in bed when the rest of us are trying to sleep.

At 12:30 I decided after a half an hour of constant crying that I would go downstairs to get her some milk. I heard a bump and ran upstairs to find her standing at the door with her teddy and blanket.

Any suggestions on overcoming the jet lag and keeping her in cot?? A colleague suggested it's time to move her into a bed!

Despite the worry and concern I must admit I was quite proud of her prowess in scaling the cot rail.

Put her in a toddler bed with a stairgate across the doorway. A friend's daughter started doing this at the same age and on one occasion tipped over as she landed and broke her arm
And I reckon you can sign her up for the local gym club now

Hi, I have two little houdinis! Mine started climbing out of the cot at about the same age. They are 19 months now and can now vault stairgates too. I've left them in their cots, but leave the sides down so they can get in and out easily. I think they are too young for a bed yet and would jsut fall out. We have a stairgate on the door, mounted about 3-4 inches above the floor so it is high enough that they can't get over it. I had to remove everything from their room, or they pull it all out, or use it to climb on to get over the gate. Then this weekend I had to make a door for their built in cupboard to stop them climbing into that and climbing up the shelves to pull all their clothes down (the rail is about 6ft up).

I think once they have learnt to climb it is practically impossible to stop it, jsut has to be contained as much as possible. I can't leave their window open in their room and I am scared of them climbing out of it. As soon as I sort one thing out they find soemthing else to get themselves into trouble with. Most nights now they play for a bit then maybe scream for 10 mins then fall asleep either on the floor or together in one cot. I don't go up until it is all quiet then I make sure they are both in their own cots!

I meant one of those toddler beds with a rail at the head end - they do them in Argos for £99 or elsewhere for more. They're low but 'grown up'.

If you get one of the mesh stair gates, they have difficulty getting enough purchase to get over the top.

My mum had a foster carer that had to put one of those 6 foot metal gates across her stairs to stop one of her foster kids wandering. The little girl was just over 2 at the time.

she moves so much when she is asleep that I'm worried about putting her in a bed.

It is actually a cot bed we have so maybe we will convert it to the bed mode and put lots of pillows on the floor.

We have had it so easy up to now.

I guess she'll be a bit young for the London Olympics.

6 foot metal gate???

Could you put her in a grobag - makes it more difficult to climb out? Or maybe she'd just escape from that too.

She was frighteningly clever in her powers of deduction that little one. Built towers, piled stuff up to get out of her room and downstairs.

I thought about the Grobag this morning, JackieNo. Anyone else got views on this.

Mine can escape grobags, and scream in fury if I try to put them in them anyway.
also those mesh stairgates, I was thinkign about the rigid mesh ones, but the ones that are rollerblind style we had and the dts broke!

Mine could climb out of cots and over stairgates even in a grobag! If the Olympics ever introduced sack racing as an event he'd have been a natural. The answer is two stairgates, mounted one above the other (obviously you need the type which don't have a rail at the bottom for this to work without you having to become a limbo expert).

The thing with a grobag is that the arms are free, so I think it would possibly be even more dangerous. A straitjacket on the other hand...

stairgates over the top of each other, that is genious Wish I had thought of that. I might jsut do it if the dts climb over the raised one.