Getting almost 3 year old to stay in his own bed

[Summerdays2014]

Hi, my son is almost 3 and since the summer his sleep has been awful. Getting him to sleep in his own bed and him staying in there has been a disaster ever since we took him out of the sleeping bag and he realised he could climb out of the cot. In an effort to all get more sleep we’ve ended up having him sleep with one of us and the other sleeping in the spare room. Myself and my husband decided that after Christmas we would tackle this as we’d like to sleep in the same bed again and we don’t get a good night sleep with our son kicking us/moving around etc.
So on Boxing Day we put him in his own bed to go to sleep and that was actually ok and he fell asleep with us stroking his back. But he is coming into us 5/6 times a night. We take him back to bed and he goes back to sleep quite easily but I was hoping that after 4 days the amount of wake up would be starting to decrease - it’s not. He’s also now starting to wake ready for the day at 5. When he slept with us it was 6 which was fine.
Anyone got any insight as to how long it will take for him to start sleeping through? Appreciate he is doing really well and it’s a big change for him, but at the moment I’m tempted to go back to co sleeping!

Well done. Might get flamed for saying this but in our experience (our family and anecdotally) both children and parents sleep so much better apart, even if it’s a hassle to teach them the right habits.

• Buy a gro clock. Talk it through with him. Explain he is a big boy and therefore gets to (insert nice things here eg eat ice cream) but also big boys use a gro clock and must stay in their room until the sun comes up.

• perserve. You’re doing the right thing to return him. The important thing is to return him immediately. Ideally leap out when you hear him come out of his room (bell on the door worked for us). No conversation, no cuddle, no 5 minutes in your bed, no ‘carrots’ that encourage him to come out, just turn him around and lead him back and put him back with a brief ‘sleepy time’. You can be warm and loving without providing him with any stimulus that rewards him for getting up.

Give yourself another two weeks i’d say.

Thanks Dust. We do have a gro clock that we tried on the summer when things first started going wrong. I’ll give it another go!

Hoping for inspiration from this thread as I too have a 3 year old sleeping with me every night...

Don’t be too nice when he comes in to you. Not unkind but no fuss, no conversation except “It’s sleep time”. No back scratching or cuddles just a calm, firm expectation of sleep.

What cherry said. You don’t want them to feel scared or guilty, but you want them to realise there is zero benefit (and for a 3 year old, a big cuddle is a huge benefit) to getting out of bed.

One thing I learnt with kids is to persevere, but sensibly. So things that don’t work the first time, give it a week and the. give it a break and try again a fortnight later. I think sleep training needs longer to ‘bed in’ (haha) but certainly just because the gro clock didn’t work the first time, don’t rule it out!

Thanks. I’ll try the gro clock again tonight. We do the whole no talking thing already and he is really quite good at going back down. As you say Dust, I’ll persevere!