Moving Toddler to big bed

[Fancy Face]

Hi there! Please provide feedback/advice as to how we should go about moving our 19 month old daughter to a big bed from her crib. We have checked different sites on this and think she is ready but if any of you have tried and tested this move and have some tips, that would be greatly appreciated. What should we expect, etc?

Thanks!!

[Bullseye]

No help here, we've been trying to get our 22 month old boy into his new race car bed with little luck. He will nap in it occasionally, but most times we have to go get him after 30 minutes of him taking the room apart and banging on the door, and move him to his crib.

We're sort of under the gun, too, as we also have a 5 week old who we want in the crib within 2-3 months.

[Wiseman]

Maybe wait a bit longer. We moved our child at 2 years to a regular bed from the crib and aside from a little fear the first few days (which is inevitable), the adjustment went well. Once we moved the bed in, we spent alot of time in the room with the bed so she would know it is safe, as well as play on the bed just to get her aquainted with it. I think the main fear was the big open space around her and to remedy this, we put pillows all around just to make her feel "enclosed". Hope this helps.. it might be an age/maturity thing, but all kids are different.

[volan]

If you can wait then I think you should. We waited until our son was past 2-1/2 before trying. At that age he knew the difference between baby and big-boy.

We actually put the big boy bed in another room and we showed our son. Then we talked about it for a couple of weeks. We'd let him go into the big boy room and we'd tell him that he'd soon be able to sleep in the big boy bed.

We kept talking about the baby room and the big boy room and then we started a countdown of 3 sleeps, 2 sleeps, etc. Then the big night came and he was so excited to sleep in the big boy bed.

My son moves around a lot at night so we put pillows and blankets on the floor around the bed so that if he fell out he wouldn't get hurt. We also tucked in the blankets relatively tightly so that it would keep him in bed.

He slept though the night and he was so happy the next day. He told us all about sleeping in the big boy bed.

He's 3-1/2 now and still refers to the other room as the baby room, which is fine by us because a new baby will be in there in a couple of months.

[nalababe]

Around 1 1/2 or so, when he could easily escape from his crib, we moved him to his own room and bed. The bed in this case was simply a mattress on the floor. He has used this until only this past week when we bought him a bedroom set (now 3 1/2)...no problems in general...

[gorf]

I think we moved our kids out around a year and a half-ish to 2 years. When they started crawling out of the crib, it was a sign to get them out. Do you guys have a nite-lite in the rooms? Maybe that will help. Plus you just have to read Goodnight Moon. Over and over and over again.

[nalababe]

Instead of a nite light, we put a fish tank in his room....

[tanmanwayne]

I have an 18 mo daughter and we never had the opportunity of having her in the crib (she absolutely hated it) and thus slept with us until about 2 weeks ago.

We have a guest room with our old queen size bed, but in preparation, we bought rails anyway and put them on that bed.

The first few days my DW and I would go to our child's 'new' bed and nap with her (it was great on weekends) as we would normally...she would normally wake up first and jump on the both of us.

Afterwards (for a day or two), one or both of us would lay with her during her naps and bed time till she fell asleep and would leave once she dozed off. Although for about 3 days she would wake up in the middle of the night and cry as if lost (poor thing) and either one of us would lay with her till she dozed off again.

Now...she knows it's her bed, she'll pass out on her own and wake up on her own. If she wakes up before we do...she'll simply climb down the bed herself, trod off into our bedroom and wake us up.

What can I say...no better way of waking up in the morning than to have your little one stir you up and call your name "Daaaaad", open your eyes and seeing her standing at the side of your bed looking at you like her hero!

Sorry...getting sentimental.

Cheers!
Tano

[HockeyGirl]

I worked with toddlers before in an child care centre, so i duno if following will help.

When infants use to transition to the toddler room, they dont sleep on cribs anymore. we have beds, well not beds, but the name of it , totaly slip my mind. oh cots. yeah thats right.

But we did the process slowly. Like, one day, they sleep on crib, then slowly transition them to the cot/bed... and as well include toys that they like in there..


I dont know if that helped! lol...