sleep.going from cot to bed!!!!!

[barmymamma]

hiya, can anyone give some good tips on how to smoothly move DS from cot to bed. have older son, but his transition was a bit of a nightmare, lol. so thought id ask for some idea's before i start this time.

Stairgate across bedroom door to stop escaping.

Get your ds to choose his own duvet cover so that he is really excited about using it.

for the first week we used to go to sleep with him with giant bean bag. get him to really enjoy his bed. then after a week we put up a gate to stop him wandering.

had controlled crying for one night then he went to sleep on his own no problem from the 2nd night.

agree with muffin. get them to chose bedding.

my ds loves his bed. hates the gate. we feel if we had done the 2 at same time he would hate the both. but you gotta have a gate to stop midnight wandering.

Agree with new bedding.

Get him used to a closed door at bedtimes, if you do the safety gate he will be like a prisoner of war yelling through it. A closed door is impossible to argue with.

With dd she has a few small books and lots of cuddly toys that she plays with before she takes herself to bed (usually takes about 20 minutes). It really does not matter if they don't stay in bed...they will fall asleep somewhere eventually. If you start going up to put him in bed the 'game' lasts for hours and he knows he has you on a string. I still wonder why people do this? My dd regulaly sleeps on the floor...thats fine I just pop a cover over her (and the floor is carpeted...that may make a difference )

we close the door to. but he always comes to open it . we found ds emptying shampoo one night we forgot to shut gate. depends how old your dc is. mines is young. was under 2 y o when moved as kept climbing out.

and agree with ally. they dont always fall asleep on bed. sometimes they remove bedding and camp on floor. just shift them to bed when you go to bed yourself

dd was 2.2yrs, our door has a latch at about 5ft hight but you can always use a broom handle...someone posted once on one of these threads and had me in stitches ....'no mummy!! Not the broom again!'

thanks for idea's. we tried gate with older ds, but he screamed the house down. so then had to sit with him till he fell asleep, gradually sitting closer to the door each night. this was time consuming though and we still have to sit with him now and he is 4 this month!! do only sit for 3 mins now though and leave even if he is awake.
want to get 2nd ds to sleep in bed by xmas, thought about trying he gate again though,now while he still in cot. so he is used to it being on door before he goes in the bed. what do you think?

do you mean using it now and letting him play in room. this would possibly work, as we use the gate just now to stop ds wandering but also so he stays and plays in his room for a bit before coming to shout on us.

i think as long as your seperating the gate from the bed. you want him to enjoy his bed. thats the main aim. that he likes to go in it. we now have a wee thomas tent thing that goes over bed. ds loves it (2.6y.o)

Sonething that works well for us is putting ds1 (and 2) to bed, closing the stairgate, but then me pottering around upstairs in the area of his room (usually putting washing in the airing cupboard next to his room, tidying up etc). Ds1 seems to like that. I guess he feels that he hasn't been abandoned the moment that the gate is shut. He now even has tantrums on days when I don't do that ('mummy put washing away' in agitated tones).

elmoandella, i ment, put gate on while he still sleepin in cot, so he gets used to it being there before i move him into bed.that way he hopefully wont see it as a bad thing.i know someone else who has a tent thing on the bed. i will deff look into that if the other ideas dont work.bet older child il want one too though, lol.
muffin, i alredy tell youngest that i will go back to see him after bathing his big brother, so he used to settling in cot knowing we all still upstairs. he normally asleep before i get back to him!so will keep that going with the gate.