Any and all advice welcome for help with transition to big boy room/bed

Traycee1242

I seriously would have kept him in the crib until he was at least 3 if I could.... this sucks

I totally jinxed myself here... lesson learned (I posted about how he slept great in his crib, lol) . DS started climbing out of his crib the next day.. we had it on the lowest setting with no bumper pad... the kid is a monkey. I was half impressed and proud at his climbing ability and half annoyed. He would do it soundlessly, open the door and walk downstairs... it scared the hell out of us... I can just imagine him falling down the steps in the middle of the night, etc.

So we took all weekend and moved him to the guest room.(we were planning on doing this soon anyway..I don't want him to feel replaced by the baby if we would wait until right before baby is here to do it)... painted, moved all his furniture.. converted crib to toddler bed. We played in there and read stories and let him help us.. tried to make it as cool as possible so he would be excited.

Granted last night was our first night... but I've never had a worse night. He freaked out. We put a gate on the door and left the door open. Had his white noise, everything he usually has. He scaled the damn gate in about 5 seconds. What should I do now??? Ugh.

It took him over 2 hours to fall asleep... a lot of sobbing. He kept pointing to his old room crying. My kid does not like change and is a little OCD (totally guilty, he gets it from me) about his routine and what goes where. He woke up SO many times.. I'm sure because he was confused/scared about where he was. It was brutal.

We are doing the Sleep Lady Shuffle again (this is what we used to transition him to the crib and it worked wonderfully) so we're not just blindly shutting him in there.

Anything else I can/should be doing? I'm lost. And of course DH is going to be out of town for the next 2 weeks so it's all up to me. How long did it take your DC to adjust? I totally understand this is a big adjustment and will take time.. he just seems to be so traumatized by it... he loves to sleep and when he's tired he will head upstairs... when he was climbing out of his crib it was after he was waking up... not because he didn't want to be in there.

Help!

buckeyethor

They do that. It has been over 2 months and she doesn't like to go down in her big girl bed for naps. You are going to have to just shut the door and get a child handle thing on it to keep him from wandering at night.

kel716

You may not like our solution...  We put a child proof lock on the inside of the door.  That kept him in his room.  And there were times when we just had to let him cry.  But, the first few weeks were awful.  I'm sure you could go back to some of my posts from late July/early August and relate.

Anyway, we bought magic bumpers.  Seriously, that's all he needed to sleep in his bed.  He didn't want to be in his crib, but he needed the security of something to lean against.  While transitioning, we were super sticklers to our routine, and all was well again within 2-3 days once we got those bumpers.  Before that, he spent too much time crying and barely slept. 

Jscaggs

We had a motion sensor monitor with DD for her baby monitor so we have left it in place so that we know when she gets out of bed.  It gives her 20 seconds and then will go off-this means that when she does get out of bed she doesn't get far.  We have been pretty lucky in that as soon as she gets up she usually comes right to our room rather than wander around.  We usually close the door when we lay her down, but then open it back up before we go to bed.  Also, we don't put a night light in her room.  We noticed that in the beginning when we had a night light in her room she tended to get out of bed.  When it was pitch black she tended to stay put.

doodlebug914

I don't have much advice because things fortunately worked out for us.  We moved to a new house during this time as well, and Ethan's crib got recalled, plus we got rid of the binkie.  I thought it was going to be a disaster but somehow went well.  Ethan sleeps well in the dark and we keep his door closed with room darkening curtains.  We put one of the door knob protectors on the inside of his door, so he couldn't get out and wander.  He has the monitor in his room of course.  We have had no issues... he sits in bed and calls out for us when he wakes up.