School me on big kid beds

ghostgirl

I feel like a moron even asking this, but did you buy your DC a twin mattress from a regular old mattress store?  Did you buy a box spring/frame or just the mattress to put on the floor?  We're going to get DD a big kid bed this weekend and for some reason I don't know where to start...any other tips for the transition are appreciated!

SoonToBeMrsDTS

We just got regular old twins for our kids. We bought bunk beds that can be separated so no box springs. Had we gotten a regular bed we would have gotten box springs for them. I bought bed rails from Walmart so they wouldn't fall out. My 3.5 year old doesn't need rails now but my 2 year old still needs them. My sister-in-law just has a mattress on the floor for her son and it works fine. I like having storage space under the bed and I felt like moving them from a mattress on the floor the bed high up would just be more transition to go through. Her son is much more laid back than my two!

Other tips: Make sure you have EVERYTHING before you set it up (mattress pad, multiple sets of single sheets, pillow, blankets, rails). Be ready for it to take awhile for your child to get used to it. It was much longer than I thought for DS to stay in the bed. 

Artslvr

Yep regular mattress at a regular mattress store.  We got a very firm mattress at JC Penney.  No box spring, because the style of bed we have for DD #1 is a captain's style which is a platform bed. 

We ordered the bed and mattress (took a few weeks to get both in and assembled) and started talking it up to DD.  "In just a little while you'll be in a big girl bed - wow, won't that be special!?" stuff like that.  The bed arrived before the mattress, so DH set it up in her new big girl room and it sat there for about a week before the mattress came.  So we kept talking it up, pointing to it, and starting with the rules.  "Once you're in bed, there are only a few reasons to get out, now what are they?"  Answer:  to go potty, to go throw up/if you're sick/injured, and if the house is on fire. 

She transitioned really well, but I'm attributing most of that to the fact that DD #1 is a really easy kid.  We are ordering a bed soon for DD #2 and I can already tell that she's going to be more of a challenge - we're putting her in a bed a younger age than DD #1, and in general she is much more defiant than DD #1 (not overly-defiant - I think just normal-kid defiant). 

Also, very soon after the transition to the bed, because DD #1 is not perfect and did still try to get out of bed - we bought the Tot Clock.  Which I HIGHLY recommend.  https://www.mytotclock.com/home.php?osCsid=q9310n4qdrdctv9hipamurcq64  They look at the color on the clock face to tell them whether it's OK to get out of bed.

I'm hoping that since the girls will be sharing a room soon, when DD #2 transitions to a bed, that DD #1 will be a good model for her and help her learn the Tot Clock, and when it's OK to get out of bed.

ETA:  At 3 1/2 DD #1 still has the bed rails on her bed (we bought the Xtra long ones) and I have no plans to remove them any time soon.  Captain's style beds are higher off the floor than regular beds, and she still moves all over the place when she sleeps (we often find her at the foot of the bed, upside down).

Artslvr

PS, I LOVE your sig picture.  I don't think we have one single photo of the four of us where we're all looking at the camera, smiling.  There's always either one kid who turns their head, or I half close my eyes, or DH gets caught in the middle of a yawn... I always wonder how the heck families do it!? 

Sofka

we moved DD to what used to be a guest room and did not want to buy a new bed and have to get rid of our queen. So, she's in a regular queen-size bed, rails, box spring, mattress, etc. It's up against the wall and we put her toy box at the foot of the bed and a rail (the largest size we could find) on the other side. We had to put a huge board up b/w the bed and the dresser (large adult dresser, also part of the old guest room) b/c she has tried to climb from bed to dresser.

We did this b/c we already had everything, otherwise we'd have either converted her crib (it goes to toddler and then a double bed) or bought her a toddler bed. We simply went w/ the cheapest option!

And I sent the tot clock clink to FIL/SMIL to buy DD for her b-day:) thanks, artslvr!

amh_navyblue

Like Artslvr, I have a pretty easy going DD#1.  We converted her crib to a toddler bed first and she was pretty used to sleeping in that before we transitioned her to a twin size bed.  I don't think we would have used a toddler bed at all if we didn't have the convertible crib.  Her transition to the twin sized bed was helped by the fact that we did it when we moved last fall, so the room was new to her, it always had the twin bed in it and we converted the crib back to a crib (I was pregnant with DD#2 and the girls now share a room). 

While DD does move around a lot in her sleep, she seemed pretty used to sleeping in a bed without a rail, so we have never used a rail on her big bed, though it is up against the wall.  When she transitioned to the toddler bed, we just put some heavy blankets on the floor so that if she did fall off, it wouldn't be to traumatic.  She only fell out once, the first night she slept there. I think if she had gone from the crib to a twin bed without the toddler bed transition, we probably would have used rails.

Oh, and we bought her bed at Ikea--pretty decent price, simple bed--it has a box spring, a mattress and a mattress pad.  Something else to consider when getting the big bed is getting a waterproof cover so that when you go through night time potty training, you aren't worried about ruining the mattress.