Speaking of cribs, I started this post on November 17th. I quickly abandoned it for no good reason. I realized tonight it was due to an unbelievable heap of procrastination. No, I wasn’t procrastinating about the writing. It was the act of moving O from crib to toddler bed. We’ve done this before, about 2 years ago. It wasn’t pretty. F had climbed out of the crib one day during his nap and greeted our nanny. I was on strict bed-rest with O. 3 weeks later I delivered and we had a newborn at home in concert with daily 2 hour stand-offs with F at bedtime. Staying in bed wasn’t his plan. He’d empty his entire closet, climb on top the chairs, look out the window, ask for water. Sing his repertoire of songs. Repeat his repertoire of songs. Consequently, for about 6 months we agonized in the reality that we’d moved F to a “big” boy bed prior to him transitioning into a “big” boy. Toddler-two’s-torture. Crib jail had been so nice.
For O, I knew it was time to move him to a bed back in November. Just couldn’t bring myself to follow through. Toooooooo, tired. A fairly lame and indefensible (yet understandable?) excuse. We got away with it. Sans a trip to the ER, we took off the front of the crib today. He’s been out of his bed all evening tonight. Let the games begin.
We still shouldn’t have waited. I wasn’t taking my own advice. I’m here to confess…
On November 17th, in a draft of this post, I wrote:
O greeted me this morning, first thing, with a “Good Morning, Mommeeee.” Trouble was, I was still in bed. The husband is in Africa doing research this week, so I’ve been flying solo. Between work and my inexperience as a single mom, the boys have to wait for me to get my act together in the AM and fetch O from the crib after he awakens. This morning was different. You know those moments in life when you start talking out loud even while alone? I was muttering to myself before 7. I heard O approaching my bedroom and something about it just didn’t seem right as I awoke. And then I realized, goooood grief, he’s climbed out of the crib. So.not.okay.
Present day: O has been climbing out of the crib for four weeks now. He showed me how he did it, I watched again and again and despite any good sense, I decided he was remarkably skilled at the dismount. I liked the idea that those high walls still impeded the typical exodus (he stayed in until naps were over, etc). Everyone around here went along with this. I have no idea why. Suddenly things changed this weekend. O has been joining me in bed around 2, 4, and 5 am every morning for the last 3 nights. I’m tired. Clearly the walls of that crib are now serving no purpose except a dangerous, early morning steeple-chase.
Tonight he’s exploring the limits of the house (and our patience). But I’m entirely less worried about his safety. We all love the safety and security of a crib due to its jail-type confines. We rest easier knowing our children are safe and will rest. Until the climbing begins…
4 Golden Rules on When to Transition From Crib to “Toddler” or Floor Bed:
- If your child demonstrates he/she can climb out of the crib, ditch the crib. Hands down. Don’t do what I did this past month in waiting. Although most kids will do well, I’ve cared for a number of children who have broken arms and legs falling from the crib in a desperate exit-attempt.
- If your child is actively toilet-training, ditch the crib. If you’re actively training your child to pee when they need to, that last thing you want to do is have them confined in a crib (and diaper) and dependent on you helping them out to pee. Truth be told, if you’re really going to hand over the reigns and abandon the diapers, the crib needs to go, too.
- If your child is about 3 years of age and has never climbed out the crib, it’s probably a good time to transition to a “big boy/girl bed” or mattress on the floor. Developmentally, they are certainly ready to be in a big bed and will welcome the independence. Discuss the change ahead of time. Have your child assist in picking out the bed or the sheets. Then set a date. Do a countdown on the calendar. Practice. Don’t look back…
- If you or another caregiver is unable to lift your child in and out of the crib, it’s time to transition to a floor mattress or toddler/child bed. Once a child is over age 1, there is absolutely no reason you can’t use a standard bed with a bed-rail for your child’s sleeping spot. The unfortunate reality is they may be able to escape!
What’s your story? How did your transitions go?
Viki says
NIghts were easy, naps were horrendous. I didn’t have the patience or energy for an extinguish method to stay in there and keep putting her back in bed when she got out. It just made me angry! Also, free roam of the house didn’t always involve finding mama. One time she wanted to tuck in the baby as he slept. Another time she wanted to make me toast in the morning, and pushed a chair to the counter to reach the toaster. When she was going on 3 she and was night-training, she earned the privilege of operating the door and going to the potty or getting a drink by herself. As she approached 4 she earned further priveleges of getting a snack and playing downstairs by herself. These transitions can be rough because we’re teaching them a whole set of new boundaries. I didn’t actually make her sleep on the bed. I often found her on the floor with a blankie and teddy because that made her feel like she had power inside her room.
Julia says
Our transition to a toddler bed when my daughter was 18 months old was really easy. Part of that was because the door knob on her bedroom door in our old house is sticky so she couldn’t leave her bedroom without us opening the door. There were times that she would get up and play when she should’ve been sleeping, but her room was a safe place without hazards that were in the rest of the house (stairs, tall things to climb on, etc) so we weren’t worried about that. She loved the freedom of being able to come and go from her own bed. I don’t know if I’d recommend that age for everyone, but we chose to when she started to try and climb *into* her crib and we were worried she’d hurt herself. It seemed safer just to put her in her own bed. Most of my mom-friends thought we transitioned her too young but she enjoyed it. Our biggest change was instead waking up to her crying to get out of the crib, we would wake up to her knocking on her bedroom door to get out!
Dr_som says
Thanks for such relevant topics. My 2yo now sleeps on a mattress on the floor in my room…at least now she doesn’t climb into my bed at 2 am. The gate didn’t work and locking the door felt unsafe not to mention the screaming that would wake her siblings.
Amy says
Thanks for this! I was pretty much operating on those guidelines—-my two yr old twins have not climbed out of their cribs yet, and are not yet potty trained, so we are keeping them in there for now. But we had planned to switch to beds when either 1 or 2 happened, whichever comes first.
They can’t open their bedroom door yet either, but probably will be able to by the time they are potty trained, so they can go to the bathroom if need be. I suspect they’ll be ok to stay in their room during nap/bed time, but fool around with each other, and their toys a lot while we transition to beds. I’m sure it will be a tiring few days or weeks, but all kids seem to get the hang of it, so I guess mine will too.
Jennifer says
I dreaded the day we had to move from a crib to a bed, but in the end it was pretty much a non-issue. I think it helped that her crib turned into a toddler bed, because really it has been less of a change for her. I am glad that we waited until 26 months when she was more ready rather than pushing her out of the crib at 18 months when her little sister arrived. The only problem I have run into is finding her in my bed in the middle of the night, as we heat our house by wood stove and need to keep her door open.
Erin says
Soooo glad you wrote on this topic! About to make the big switch with our 28-mo-old daughter even though she is not climbing out. It’s a high-ish bed and I plan to put a rail on it to prevent rolling out and hopefully climbing out too.
My plan is to continue to put her in and out of bed and not let her explore that she can do it herself until she is used to the idea of staying in bed once there. i am not sure this will work, but we are going to be needing the crib soon (wink wink) so i want to get this down before i get too big to get her in and out of the crib and also to get it cemented before the big change of having another little person in there…i have heard that older siblings will revert behavior-wise in reaction to having a new sibling in the house. this is also why i am not even pushing potty training right now.
Rachel says
Being pregnant with baby #2 forced our hands to move my 2 year old daughter out of the nursery and into her new bedroom and her big-girl bed. She had not been showing any signs of readiness — no climbing into or out of the crib. There were going to be two big changes at once (plus a new baby!) and I was terrified that it would be a disaster. But we needed the nursery for the baby so we had to do it. Our crib was not a convertible one and we chose not to use a toddler bed since she would hopefully have only been in it for a short while so instead we planned on putting the twin mattress on the floor with ample pillows around it. Well, when the bed delivery men came, they had already set up the entire bed by the time I went upstairs to tell them that we only wanted the mattress on the floor! That changed the plan somewhat as I felt too lazy at 7 months pregnant to disassemble the entire thing. We decided to have her in the new room for 1 week, sleeping in a pack n’ play next to the bed as a first transition step and then move her into the twin bed (with safety gates in place) after she had acclimated to her new space. I fretted frantically as the move day approached although I put on an excited face for her, but of course when the day came, it was a nonevent. She loved her new room. We read her bedtime stories on the bed and she loved it, wanting to sleep in it after one night in the pack n’ play. We reviewed the rules about this new, big, very tall bed (no jumping, no standing up, no getting down unless we are here) and she accepted them without a fuss. I ensured that she wouldn’t get too hurt if she tumbled out by making a sea of pillows and blankets around the bed as a safety cushion but we never needed them. I think that moving her at 26 months was a good thing since she was still young enough that she wasn’t challenging every single thing we told her. To this day (10 months later) she has never gotten out of her bed, instead waiting for us and playing with her cuddle animals until we come in to get her. We feel very lucky to have had such an easy time of it with child #1. I imagine it will be a completely different story when her little brother is ready to move to his crib but we will keep our fingers crossed!
Stacey Arnold says
We transitioned K to a toddler bed around 18 mos after she climbed out of her crib. It went surprisingly well because since her bed was her crib just converted she for some reason believed she couldn’t leave the bed. So she’s sit in bed and call for us to come get her after sleep. Sadly she discovered one day when she was around 2 that she could indeed get out during what was supposed to be sleep time and then life changed 😉 Good luck with the transition!
Amy Jennings says
Stacey,
I realize this was posted years ago, but you were basically in the same boat that we are now. What did you end up doing to keep your child in bed?
With our older (now 4-year-old) we ended up having to just sit with him until he fell asleep. After that we just weaned him gradually from having us with him. Now we just rub his back for a few minutes and he’s good. It took a really long time (years) to get to this, though.
Any words of wisdom from you or others?
Sara T says
We had a similar experience to Rachel. Our daughter did figure out how to crawl out of the pack and play (which lived in our room) on her second birthday so the next night we moved her to her own bed. We live in a two bedroom apartment and the bed in the other room was a high wrought iron bed that was an old family heirloom. I had nowhere to store it and I would never get rid of it so this was basically our only option! I put long bumper pillows on each side and kept it against the wall. Because my daughter has to touch everything and run everywhere I braced myself for a long supernanny fight to keep her in bed. Much to our amazement, however, she won’t get out of the bed! It has been four months now. She sometimes will refuse to sleep for a long time after she goes down for a nap, but she has never once tried to escape. I think the height scares her. She does stand and jump on the bed when we are there but not if we leave.
I am very, very grateful that this has been one battle I have not had to fight! Parenting is enough if a challenge that we should all get a free pass on something. 🙂
JustSomeKid says
i was in my crib for a lot longer than most people agree i should have been. we were living in less than ideal conditions for bringing up a child (caravan (trailer to americans, yes, i’m from the UK), then unheated, rough and ready type single room for the whole family affiar), so me staying in the crib was largely a space and cost issue, but i loved it. i stayed in it until i could no longer lay flat in it, and i still miss it. i eventually learned how to take the sides on and off by myself, much to my mothers dismay, and ended up using it kind of like a bedroom. my parents did a couple of times try to take all the sides off, and convert it into a toddler bed, but i repeatedly replaced the sides, so they gave up.
i think they figured, given my tendancy to fall off even the most safe things, they were not going to fight too hard to take the sides off.
i think i was about to start school when they finally managed to entice me out of it.
atxmom1985 says
Hoping to keep our LO in her crib as long as possible! Something that has helped a lot is her zipadee zip. It’s prolonged her from climbing out and she sleeps so great in it. I would definitely recommend it! We started using it very early, after she needed to transition out of the swaddle. Hoping this helps!
chantelle says
My 8 month on little girl fell out her crib, assuming she used the cot bumpers to climb up and throw herself over. When do i transition her into a bed. Don’t want her to fall again 🙁
Jesse_Devorak says
The Zipadee-Zip is what we used for our LO too! It prolonged her from climbing out and she sleeps so great in it. I would definitely recommend it! We started using it very early, after she needed to transition out of the swaddle.
IrmaLima1234 says
Crib sleeping is now making my sleep so much better! My LO sleeps in his crib while wearing a Zipadee-Zip sleeping suit! The suit has conditioned him to know that its time to go to sleep. Anyone else experience the same with their kids!
Maenad Widdershins says
Fun to read all the stories. When they climb out of the crib and beat you to the door of their room, the crib needs to go. My kids are long past this age, but the best advice I ever got from a parent educator at the co-op preschool we attended was “stop talking”. We talk too darned much. My daughter who stopped napping at 2, hated going to bed because she might miss something, was constantly getting up and coming into our room. She was looking for engagement. The first time we put her back we would say something like, it’s now time to sleep, and we’ll see you in the morning. Any subsequent putting her back in her room, we weren’t allowed to say anything to her. The parent educator encouraged us to keep count of how many times we put her back each night so we didn’t get discouraged. We put her back to bed several times the first few nights, but since we wouldn’t talk to her and were incredibly boring when we put her down, the number of times we had to return her to her room quickly dropped. In about a week, she pretty much stayed in her room all night.
Funny enough the 2 year old who would not nap is now in her second year of college and thinks naps are just the best thing ever!
Wendy Sue Swanson, MD, MBE says
“stop talking!” I love this advice. In this situation and, of course, is so many others….
Rosa Mario says
I have 2 years old baby boy. last few days i am thinking to move him crib to bed. Thanks for sharing some helpful tips transition from crib to bed. It’s really helpful for me.
Katie J. says
Thank you for this. We have a 19 month old who had mastered climbing out of pack n plays at his grandparents’ houses over the past two weeks, and tonight just showed me how he can climb out of his crib. He was pleased and proud as could be!. I’m both proud and terrified! We’ll switch the crib to a toddler bed tomorrow and see how it goes. Thanks also for the “stop talking” advice from one of the commenters for managing nocturnal trips from the bedroom!
Jessica says
Hi Katie,
My 19 mo just started climbing out of his crib and opening his bedroom door. It was a shock when he joined us in the living room one night. I converted his crib into a toddler bed, but he refuses to even lay down in it. He immediately slides off, before I even leave the room, and begs me to breastfeed him. Prior to this transition he slept 11-12 hours a night. Now, he has been sleeping in my bed. Would love to hear any advice you might have about your son’s transition to a toddler bed. Thanks
Linda James says
I had the problem where my 14 months was climbing out of her crib in the middle of the night. We’d put her back and she’d sleep again, but we couldn’t go back to sleep.
So we briefly converted her crib to a toddler bed and it was a disaster. For days she wouldn’t stay in the bed. She would get out of the bed constantly. She simply was not mature enough to stay in the bed and go to sleep (when we transitioned our 3 year to a toddler bed we didn’t have this problem, she was more mature).
So then we converted the bed back to a crib but turned it around to have the shorter side against the wall and the taller side out. She just climbed over the sides (which are all shorter).
Finally we forked over $45 for a pair of pajamas that would stop her from climbing out. We were desperate and they were actually worth it. I recommend anyone that has kids under 3 that climb out check out these pajamas. They’re called Little Grounders and you can find them here: https://littlegrounders.com/ My husband thought that it was funny when I ordered them, but now he swears by them.
Terry J. says
Thank you so much Linda. I ordered these Little Grounders for my grandson and my daughter called me this morning ecstatic! I had them overnighted and it was the first time that she and my son-in-law have gotten a good night’s sleep in 2 years. There’s always so much good information on these sites. I wish they had them when I had kids!
JF says
Little Grounders… Who knew that they even made these things?!?! The things that people come up with. Just placed an order.
AM says
Our daughter never slept in a crib. We live in a small 1-BR apt so we all share that 1-BR for sleeping. R slept on a crib mattress on the floor next to our mattress on the floor from about 4 mo to 18 mo. Yes she climbed into bed with us and nursed, or I climbed into bed with her and nursed. But she night weaned around 15 mo; then we all transitioned to raised beds around 18 mo; then her bed was moved across the room around 20 mo. At first she had her fair share of getting out of bed but I tell her it’s time to sleep and lie still in bed— if she “needs help” doing that, I gently restrain her in her bed. She obviously doesn’t like that so she stays in bed herself. Now at almost 2.5 years, the rule is she can snuggle with us in the morning or play with her toys but I don’t wake up until 7am. She is learning to identify those very important numbers on the clock!