22month old wont stay in bed

[jamie&ollie]

Hi all

our son Jamie is an angel/textbook baby and now a toddler.  we moved him from his cot to a bed about a month ago as he was getting so many bruises from banging the side bars and getting his legs stuck, and he slept so much better in his bed until one night he somehow accidentally fell out, and now he just gets out at both nap time and bed time, he will undo his sleeping bag and get out and open door and run up the hall way,

we tried just picking him up and putting him back in and tucking him in but he finds this too much of a game - and he wouldn't go to sleep, so it got to a point where now we are smacking him (which we both hate having to do) and he will go down after 3 or 4 attempts on a good night,

our health visitor has told us to put a stair gate on his door and just leave him to go back to bed himself - i am not to keen on doing this as Jamie has an obsession with opening and closing doors which is what he will end up doing if i just left him with the stair gate up, and this would then wake our 9 month old who sleeps in the room next to him .

i need some advice on how to get him to stay in his bed for his nap and bedtime, both of which he has a bottle milk for.

any advice greatly received

Laura

http://www.littlebeales.co.uk

[sacmommy]

I would recommend a gate on the door as well, if you can find one that he can't undo. What we also did with our son at 2 1/2 when he started doing this was to offer a treat if he followed the "sleep rules." Which meant staying in bed and taking his nap/going to sleep at night. He also treated the "silent return to bed" as a game - absolutely didn't work with him, as one time I counted returning him 80+ times!

[DFreeman]

Hi Laura,

I can't offer any advice at all I'm afraid, but I just wanted to say "I know exactly what you're going through" as I posted almost exactly the same problem only yesterday.  I'm at my wits end with my little boy and decided today that the only way to 'contain' him is to put him back in to his cot, which I don't like to do as it seems like going backwards.  One of my issues is that I'm 7 months pregnant and it's so hard keep picking up and putting him back in bed each time.  At least if he's in his cot I don't have to do that. 

If I come up with any amazing solutions, I'll keep you posted.

Best wishes and good luck,
Donna.

[elfin]

I second the suggestion of a gate at the door.  Also when he gets up I would suggest putting him back in his bed with no talking or interaction over and over agin.

[MomofLuka]

I just posted about a similar problem with my 18-month-old who won't stay in her crib.  Never mind the toddler bed, even the crib can't contain her.  I don't think she's even old enough to remember or understand what I want her to do (stay put and go to sleep), and she certainly isn't old enough to be careful in getting out of her crib.  She gets tired and clumsy and hurts herself. 
So far I have only solved it by hovering over the crib until she goes to sleep but I am not looking forward to years of doing that.  Does anyone have a better solution?

[~Angie~]

We had the exact same problem with our son. When we first moved him to his big bed, he did great, never got up and always went right to sleep. About three months ago we started to have problems with him getting up. We also tried putting him back to bed and he thought it was a game. We bought the baby gate and tried everything we could think of. In the end, this is what helped us. We moved his nap and bedtime to thirty minutes later. Used to be nap-12:00, bedtime-7:00, now it is nap 12:30-1:00, bedtime-7:30-8:00. Now, when we put him down for nap or bed, he usually gets up one time. He will bring a book or toy to his baby gate and play. We let him play for 10 minutes. Then, we go into his room and say it is time for bed. We put him in his bed and give him one book. I tell him he can read until he is sleepy and then he needs to go to sleep. This works every time. On nights when he is very tired, he doesn't even get up. So, I guess for our LO it was an issue of not being tired enough for sleep.
I hope all works out for all of you soon. I know how frustrating this is. 

[sacmommy]

Momofluka ~ There are two things I can recommend if your child is climbing out of the crib. First, you can try a crib tent, which attaches to all the sides of the crib, and then zips up in a tent over the crib. Second, try a sleep sack/sleeping bag - grobag, halo sleep sack, etc. My dd wears one of these for warmth, but it has the added benefit of keeping her from being able to lift her legs. She's a serious climber so I'm sure I'd be pulling my hair out otherwise!

[MomofLuka]

I ordered the tent you recommended, and so I'm waiting for that now.  We live in a small town and I could not find anything like it locally available, so I have to wait.  But I did find a sleep sack.
Unfortunately, she is still able to get out of the crib while wearing it, and even walks around while wearing it.  This sleep sack is designed for a 9 month old, so I know it's not too loose. 
Dd seems to have had a big jump in intelligence lately.  I just hope she can't figure out how to take the tent off. 
I'm usually able to get her to go to sleep at night.  The sleep sack IS comfortable for her and she seems to like sleeping in it.  I think it helps her stay asleep.  So it has helped, although not in the way you might have expected!   
Before I think what was happening (besides the fact that we had 10 million loud relatives staying in our house temporarily)  is that she would throw her blankets out of the crib, and get cold, and go after them.  Then she couldn't get back into the crib, although yesterday she darn near made it back in (!!!! ) to my surprise.  But the sleep sack prevents losing the warmth. 
On other occasions, the cat may have been the instigator.  A couple of times I have heard a ruckus and walked in to find the cat in her crib and the toddler on the floor.  Then she points at the cat as though he is responsible!      For awhile I thought she was using him to get a leg up, but I realized that couldn't always be the case.  BTW he's not supposed to be in there, but he hides under her piles of toys sometimes and I don't see him. 

During naps, though, sometimes she gets out of bed to play with toys.  This is more dangerous because she has started balancing on her little tricycle thing (with the 4 wheels, whatever those are called) and trying to climb up things from there.  I had to take it out of her room, but it's only a matter of time before she finds something else.

I knew we had circus performers in our family but this is ridiculous.