moving toddler from cot to bed - how can i avoid trauma?

[readinginbed]

Any advice on how to move my 2 year old from his cot to his new bed, as little sister has outgrown the moses basket and needs his cot! Am i just building it up but i fear it will be a week of no sleep as he is phobic about anything new.

Is the cot in the same room as he is, if so put the cot next to the bed so that if he awakes the first thing he will see is the familiarity of the cot bars, etc. give him rehersal, e.g. wen playing show him his bed, talk about his bed in very positive way, play on the bed, have short naps in the afternoon in the bed, slowly get used to the bed not afraid of

my ds1 is not keen on new stuff either, but we did the whole thing as a treat for his second b/day and built up a bit of 'surprise' but actually he had chosen all the stuff like bedding and 'space' theme anyway. he knew enough to be a bit excited but fortunately not enough to freak him out and want to play all night. we put lots of little lights in it so that he could see clearly when he awoke, and got one of the side-things for the bed to stop him falling out [sorry brain not working tonight can't remember what they are called] we stuck to the same established routine, just put him in bed instead of cot, calling it a 'big boy's bed' [old chestnut]
he settled straight away.
wishing you the same

btw we left it a couple of weeks before moving ds2 into the cot, and actually dismantled it for the short time in between as he would have been more bothered that little bro was in 'his cot' iyswim. personality thing as much as anything else.

We asked ds to "help" daddy to put the new big boys bed up so he had his plastic tools and helped and he loved it after that sleeps better than ever before

we built the new bed in the day so ds could see it and also ''help''. then we sat and read stories in the afternoon on the bed to get him used to it....

does your ds havr his favourite cuddly toys etc.....

i also let ds jump up and down on his bed - great fun for him and lets him get used to the bed...

good luck

We got DS1 a car bed to make it more exciting and put it together in the spare room so he could play on it and lie on it and get used to it before sleeping in it. Also agree not to move his little sister straight in to his cot, if he is anything like my DS1 he will be upset about that! Thankfully we moved DS1 a few months before DTs were born so he didn't even work out that one of them was using "his" cot.

thank god everyone seems to agree on good strategy, thank you tons. Have scheduled the grandparents in to give us time to catch up on sleep if the first night turns into an all-nighter...