Toddlers: 24 Months+

HELP

I am so desperate. I'm anti-spanking, but LO is driving me there. My 3 year old gets out of his "big boy bed" 10-15 times before finally falling to sleep every night. I've tried everything except locking him in. And before you suggest returning him to his bed repeatedly without talking, eye contact etc...I've tried it til I'm blue in the face. I've also tried a gate (recommended by the pedi) and he busted thru it. Tried putting his crib back together - hopped right out.  I refuse to lay in there until he falls asleep. This has been going on for several months. Please please please help.

Thank you.

Re: HELP

  • We had the exact same problem with the baby gate.  He busted right through.  Does he get up at night to go to the bathroom?  If not, you could get a latch for the top of the door to keep him in his room.

    My DS1 is younger, but he has free reign of his room for naps and bedtime.  Of course, the room is baby proofed and I have a baby monitor in his room so I can hear him if he needs me.  We have a latch on the outside of the room that we used initially when he first went to the big boy bed.  We don't even have to latch it anymore because he doesn't even try to leave his room now.

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  • He still wears a diaper at night so no need to get up. I'm not keen on "locking him in." I am so hoping there are other options left...

     

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  • I just let my LO do it. Yeah, it's frustrating, but the only person it's really affecting in my household is her. If she wants to wake up the next day cranky because she stayed up too late getting in and out of bed, she has to learn how to fix it herself. I do walk her back to her room every time. I tell her she is allowed to look at her books, or have her stuffed animals, but she has to stay in bed, or at the minimum, stay in her room.

    I would definitely never enable the behavior by sleeping in there with her, because that's her getting exactly what she wants; my undivided attention at her negative behavior just so she can stay up later.

    On the occasions my LO does it, and wakes up cranky, I let her know why she is cranky, and that she can't have an extra nap because she chose to misbehave during bedtime the night before. She has gone from every night doing this, to maybe 1 time a week. 

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  • imagernbeth477:

    We had the exact same problem with the baby gate.  He busted right through.  Does he get up at night to go to the bathroom?  If not, you could get a latch for the top of the door to keep him in his room.

    My DS1 is younger, but he has free reign of his room for naps and bedtime.  Of course, the room is baby proofed and I have a baby monitor in his room so I can hear him if he needs me.  We have a latch on the outside of the room that we used initially when he first went to the big boy bed.  We don't even have to latch it anymore because he doesn't even try to leave his room now.

    I was going to suggest the latch too. The idea of a baby gate (if he hadn't of busted through it) is essentially identical to latching the door shut. Either way, ideally he isn't getting out. Since the gate didn't work, it wouldn't hurt to try a door latch. The only difference is literally the fact that you can or can't see in there.

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  • LBibLBib member
    This is long but I so appreciated other's tips and stories about what worked for them in the last month I felt it was time for me to share. We had to go to a big boy bed because at 24months, DS climbed out of his crib.

    I first had to come to terms with the fact that I couldn't keep DS in bed, I could only keep him in his room. So for the last 3 weeks I've sat ouside his room after kissing him goodnight and holding the door shut, only going in after 5, then 10, 10, and finally 15 minutes of wailing and crying to sooth him and to put him back to bed. If he was happily playing on his bed, exploring his room, or reading on the floor, I didn't go in. He has climbed into bed eventually and fallen asleep. It took, at the maximum, 2 hours from the time we turned out the light to him falling asleep. But only during the first 4 to 5 days was there 20 to 40 minutes of continuous crying, and since I was going in every few minutes to soothe him and put him back in his bed so it wasn't really continuous. Once he was down I positioned a babygate so that if he got up and opened his door, his choices were our room or back to bed. 99 of the time he's chosen our room so almost every second night I've been awakened to our door opening at 2am. We think this happens since he has a problem putting himself back to sleep after rolling out of bed and walking up.

    To make this work we had to invest in a video monitor, super duper strong toddler proof gate, and a toddler sleep sack with feet since DS has zero idea of what pillows, a cover, and blankets are actually for and that there is a difference between the head and foot of the bed, deal with clothes on the floor from his dresser in the mornings, and totally toddler proof again. Toddler proofing is most important. Also, to help with the rolling, we put a rolled up towel under his fitted sheet since bed rails don't fit we'll on Ikea beds without box springs.

    I am now 3 weeks into this plan and it is still not going compleatly smoothly, although it does get a tiny bit better every night. Tonight there was 3 minutes of crying, he only tested the door twice, and was asleep in bed within 40 minutes of turning off the light. With this level of success, next week we plan to put the gate on the door and install a door latch that we will only engage as he is falling asleep. Once he's down we'll take off the latch but leave the gate across his bedroom, no longer hallway, to prevent early morning roaming into our bedroom.

    This seems to work for us. I had to read a lot of sites and to cobble together a plan that fits our family. Finally, how I define success and what I can live with longer term moving forward may not be the same as you. I didn't want to implement a process or situation now that I would have a hard time living with for a few months. Good luck. Sleep training part 2 is hard.
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  • There is no lock or latch on DS door.. We have put a child lock handle on the inside of his room so we can still normally enter. Unfortunately he knows how to rip it off, so early morning he comes into our bedroom. But other than that he doesn't touch it. We live in a rancher on a busy street so having child locks on every door is essential. It has worked so far.. And he is almost 3 now so eventually they will just come right off
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  • I would turn his door knob around so that you can lock him in and then you can unlock it when he is asleep so if he has an issue in the middle of the night and/or there is an emergency there are no concerns. If you don't want to fiddle with the door you can do a hook and eye latch on the outside. Or if you are really opposed to having the door completely locked you can turn the door knob around and cut the door half. It will ruin the door but they are are easy to replace for around $100.

    For piece of mind I would make sure that all furniture in his room is bolted to the wall,  I would probably take most things out of the room, and I would have a video monitor and then I would leave him be, if he sleeps on the floor, so be it. We are fortunate the DD won't get out of bed, but she does toddler yoga and jumping on her bed for about an hour before going to sleep lately. She is fine and we just leave her.

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  • My friend had success with the sleep owl that you set to turn green at a certain time and they can't come out of the room until the owl is green.  It took a few days of training and time-outs, but now she stays in her bed all night. 
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