How to keep 2 year old in toddler bed at night?

[tippy]

I have a bit of a different situation with my ds but maybe some of what we do might be helpful for you. My ds is on the autism spectrum and has a lot of sensory processing issues. There are times when he has difficulty "coming down" at night. I think it has to do with not being able to self regulate. If he is doing a lot of self stimulatory behavior (head shaking, kicking and hand flapping) then I know he will have a tough transition to sleep. On those nights I will use a sensory brush, vibrator, joint compression, and a weighted blanket to help him settle down.
We have to be vigilant about not providing any overly stimulating activities within an hour or so before his bedtime. Some nights I even give him his bath before dinner since the bath at times wakes him up rather than calms him. This also means no roughhousing with DH when he gets home from work. We keep things very low key. If he gets a bath after dinner I make sure all the lights in the rest of the house are dimmed so he isn't distracted when we leave the bathroom. We go straight to his room to get ready for bed. I massage him with calendula oil, brush his teeth, put his pj's on and then he nurses and gets a few stories (usually the same one 2 or three times). I then sing hush little baby to him and put him in his bed. He has the fisher price aquarium in his bed and will often play that for a while before drifting off to sleep. On the nights he's having trouble settling down I will take him out of bed and do the sensory work with him. I don't know if any of this is helpful but I do hope you find some helpful ideas from some of the other pp's.

[gatorsmom]

Thanks, everyone, for the great ideas! It is 10pm right now and DS has been sleeping for an hour. For the past few nights this has been getting easier and easier. I knew the suggestion about eliminating temptation from his room wasn't what I wanted to do for a couple of reasons. The first is that he likes things in his room to be put where they belong and when something is missing or out of place it upsets him. So I think that removing things would ultimately upset him more than help him get to sleep. Another reason is simply that there will always be temptations in his life. I won't always be there to remove the things from his life that tempt him. He needs to learn self control. Just as we teach our 2 year olds not to bite or take things that don't belong to them, we can teach them to stay in bed! (it's a good theory, at least).

What DOES seem to work is a combination of a few ideas. This is what we're doing. First, his bedtime is a little later (9pm). Then we go through our nightly routine as I described above. We tuck him in and turn the lights off. If he gets out of bed we tell him it's time to go to sleep and we turn off his lights and put him back. Usually he is happy with that, says ok, and lays there for a few minutes. If we hear him or see his lights on, we repeat that each time, while gradually reducing what we say to him until we are just putting him in bed and saying nothing. Some nights, if he's not overly tired, that works fine. The nights he's overly tired, overly stimulated and throwing tantrums, we explain to him that if he gets out of bed again, he will have to sleep in his crib like a baby again. Fortunately, we aren't using the crib too much yet with our 2 month old. Because we understand we have to follow through- if we say he's going to his crib, we put him there. This seems to really get through to him. After being put back in his crib once or twice, he doesn't get out of his toddler bed again. We've talked up his new "big boy bed" so much that he's really proud to be sleeping in it and wants nothing to do with his crib.

Interestingly enough, he doesn't mind being in his crib during the day for naptime/quiet time. Getting him to sleep during the day lately, even in his crib, never seems to happen. But I do notice a difference in his demeanor when he hasn't had at least some "quiet time." He spends that time happily reading his board books and playing with his toys in his crib. I think he appreciates this enforced "down time." This just doesn't happen in his toddler bed so I think that naptime won't happen for a while in his toddler bed. I don't look forward to having enforce that when the time comes!

[mommyj_2]

I'm glad you found out a way to work this out. I know I can always count on all the online mamas for ideas, since something out of all the ideas will work for my DS.

[o_mom]

>Thanks, everyone, for the great ideas! It is 10pm right now
>and DS has been sleeping for an hour. For the past few nights
>this has been getting easier and easier.

Great! Glad it worked!

I did want to comment on this next part, though, to give a different perspective.

>I knew the
>suggestion about eliminating temptation from his room wasn't
>what I wanted to do for a couple of reasons. The first is
>that he likes things in his room to be put where they belong
>and when something is missing or out of place it upsets him.
>So I think that removing things would ultimately upset him
>more than help him get to sleep.

It is great that you know this, and good that you are sensitive to it.

>Another reason is simply
>that there will always be temptations in his life. I won't
>always be there to remove the things from his life that tempt
>him. He needs to learn self control. Just as we teach our 2
>year olds not to bite or take things that don't belong to
>them, we can teach them to stay in bed! (it's a good theory,
>at least).

You don't say exactly how old he is. 2 year old can be anything from 24 months to 35 months and there is a huge difference in their self control ability. For a 24 month old it may be too much to expect them to learn self control at time of day when they are most tired. A 35 month old can be very different for this, so not knowing how old your DS is, it is hard to say if this is reasonable.

Also, one of the first suggestions given to ADULTS who cannot sleep is to remove all distractions from the bedroom (TV, radio, reading material) and keep the bedroom for sleeping only. Is this because they never learned self-control? Not at all, it is because one of the ways adults exercise self-control is by removing distractions and temptations.

I think that most posters were seeing this as a developmental issue, in that as your DS matured, you would allow toys in his room. They just figured that it would be easier and less confrontational to just wait for him to develop the maturity to exercise this self control. Similar to waiting until toddlers are ready to potty-train rather than insisting that they master the self control at some arbitrary age.

Now, if you believe that your son is perfectly capable of this, and again, without a more precise age it is hard to say, then it becomes a discipline issue rather than developmental. I think you would get radically different responses if you asked how to keep a 24mo in bed compared to asking how to keep a 35 mo in bed.

Just some food for thought!

[betsydenny]

So interesting to read this and all the responses. I have a 2.7 yr old who we tried in a big girl bed this summer when she started climbing out of her crib and it was a disaster- power plays at night over staying in bed and no nap. After 3 weeks she was hitting and biting and we were both miserable!

An experienced mom told me she never let her kids out of their cribs till they were older than 3. I went home, ordered a crib tent and had it fed-exed to me.

She immediately went back to napping 2 hours a day and sleeping from 8 to 6:30 (like she had been doing before she climbed out)

It was the best $70 bucks I ever spent!

My two DCs are close in age and I just assumed I would have 2 cribs. I am so glad I did this instead of pushing DD into a toddler bed she wasn't ready for. Perhaps in another 4-6 months we will talk about taking off the tent and transitioning to a bed, but to be honest, she is happy in there and so am I. Perhaps she will stay in there till college! ;-)

One note, for those who might consider this- I now own both the original and the newer Crib Tent II and the new one is much better designed and easy to install and the interior mesh helps keep little fingers from opening the tent from the inside. (took my DD less than a week to figure that out!)

Anyway, good luck to all who try the toddler bed, but here is a vote for staying in the crib longer thanks to a crib tent!

HTH
Betsy

[gatorsmom]

Thanks to everyone who offered their ideas, there have been a lot of great ones.

As an update, DS went to sleep last night after getting up once. I again threatened him with (dread!) sleeping in his crib if he didn't stay in bed and that was the last thing we heard til 8am this morning!

And, interestingly enough, he's napping in his crib right now, after playing happily with his books for awhile. That leaves me with a rare moment of peace that I can spend cuddling my 2 month old. :)