Transitioning from Crib to Bed

When I had my kids, we didn't have toddler beds. They moved from crib to bigger beds. My oldest daughter went right from her crib into a double sized bed at about 2. Negotiating what she does when she wakes up in the morning shouldn't be hard. My little one always came from her bed into my room when she woke up.

Hi A.,
My pediatrician told me to wait until my daughter asks for a big girl bed (she's 2 1/2) as children her age don't understand imaginary boundaries like a regular bed. My best friend moved her daughter into a regular bed at about 2 yrs old and have had nothing but problems keeping her there. She is now almost 4 yrs old and her sleep habits have become terrible. Have you thought about using a pack-n-play/bassinet for the new baby and keeping your daughter in her crib for another 6-12 months? Everything I've read suggests waiting until children are older to transition into a regular bed without having to deal with issues like getting out of bed.
Let me know how it goes as my daughter will being transitioning in the near future.
~L.

A.,

I am the mother of a boy who will be 5 in June and girl who will be 3 in April. I belonged to a mom's group with my son and when our boys were turning 1 year old, we had an Early Childhood Development Specialist come talk to our group about normal 1 year old behaviors and any questions we might have. Someone raised the issue of when to move our little ones into "big boy" beds. She said it is best to keep them in cribs until the age of 3 if at all possible and at least until 2.5 years old because they simply are not ready mentally or emotionally to be in a bigger bed without the rails any earlier. Kids who have been sleeping well throughout the night for a long time will start to have sleeping issues if you move them out of a crib at an early age. I kept my son in a crib until about a month or so after he turned 3. We had a crib on which the one side would come off and we took that side off right around his 3rd birthday.

With my daughter, we had every intent of doing the same with her. She is in fact still in a crib, but it hasn't had the side on it since last July when we discovered that she was climbing out of the crib. The only reason we took the side off was because we had no way to keep her from climbing out of the crib and it was a safety issue - she was doing it even with wearing a sleep sack! At that point, she was not quite 27 months old. We had some difficulty in the beginning with her getting out of bed, primarily at nap time, so we just had to work with her to teach her she still had to stay in bed even though there was no longer a side to keep her in there. She will be getting a regular twin bed soon as she is nearly 3. I wish we had been able to keep the side on the crib until the last couple of months as we did with my son. Everyone I know who has tried to move their kid(s) out of a crib before the child was at least 2.5-3 years old has had problems. A couple have even moved their kid back into the crib it was so bad!

My advice is to get another crib and keep your daughter in her's for another year. The price of the second crib will be worth it. You're already going to be up in the middle of the night with a newborn and exhausted. You don't need to be trying to retrain your daughter how to sleep in her own bed without you being there to make sure she stays in bed, to alleviate any fears, etc. When it does come time to transition her, there are a couple of things you can do. If you have this kind of crib, take off the side to get her used to being in a bed without railings. Talk to her about it before you decide to take the side off the crib and before you get the regular bed. Explain that she will no longer have railings to keep her in bed, but that it's just as safe and actually better for getting up in the middle of the night to go potty. Take her to shop for the bed. Let her tell you what height works best for her. Also know that you do not have to get a box spring right away. You can get one of these boards to put under the mattress and provide the support a box spring would provide without raising the mattress so far up. This makes it less scary and easier for the child to get in and out of the bed. Also, if she does fall out of bed (likely at least a few times the first couple of weeks), it isn't as far to fall. Try to set the bed up in her room for a few days to a week before you actually move her into the bed. During that time, spend time with her just hanging out on the bed and getting used to it.

Whatever you do, good luck! And congratulations on the pending arrival!

A.:

Hi. My kids are the same age apart as yours and I too worried about the crib to bed transition - probably way more than I should have. My son turned 2 last April and then my second son was born in July. He loved his crib and was not climbing out so the only reason we would have moved him into the bed is so the baby could use it. Initially I was going to transition him before the baby came but as I got later in my pregnancy I decided that mentally and physically I didn't want to deal it right then - I knew it would take some effort after the transition and I just didn't have the energy. So we got a pack and play and the baby slept it in for the first 3 months. Our pack and play has a bassinet feature to it. We figured 3 months would be enough time for our first son to not freak too bad about the "new" baby getting his crib. I probably would have waited even longer but my second son outgrew the bassinet portion. So the toddler bed had been in the baby's room for awhile (just as a place to keep it) so my first son already knew that was going to be his bed (although who knows if this completely confused him). We moved the toddler bed into his room for one night and then the next night I put him to bed in the toddler bed. Read a couple of books, said good night and he layed down and went to sleep no problem just like he did in his crib. The next day (when he was playing in the backyard) we moved the crib into the baby's room. When we went to put him to bed he said he wanted to sleep in the crib but we just explained that he had a new bed, etc. That night he got up about every 2 minutes until I finally just went in and stayed in there until he fell asleep. I realized our nighttime routine would have to change a little bit. So from then on I read, tuck him in, sing him a couple of songs and I stay in his room until he falls asleep (sometimes 5 minutes sometimes 20). With the crib I could just say good night and leave and he would fall asleep on his own. Once he is asleep he has only gotten out of bed at night a couple of times and he comes straight into our room. I will let him fall asleep with us and then I put him back in his bed.

Anyway, to make a really long story short - I just wanted to point out that if things are going well with your daughter in the crib then why move her now - use a pack and play for the baby and transition her a few months after the baby is here. That way you can make it through the first sleepless months without having to worry about your toddler staying in bed.

Good luck - as with all transitions I have found that its never as hard as you think it will be :)

I found myself dealing with this issue when I was pregnant with my second child. I found a book at Target called "Big Enough for a Bed" with Elmo. (My daughter was an Elmo fanatic.) We read it a bunch of times and then she started talking about how neat it would be to have a big girl bed just like Elmo's. I bought a little toddler bed for her. It uses the same mattress as the crib, and is low to the ground so she could get in by herself. She used it until she turned 4, and now my younger daughter is using the bed, so we've gotten a lot of use out of it.

When my older daughter became too tall for the toddler bed, I transitioned her into our guest room bed (queen sized). I felt like it was better to wait to put her in the big bed because when she was 2, she couldn't climb in by herself, especially if she had to get up at night and use the potty.

If your daughter is not the type to jump out of her crib, she will probably surprise you by staying put in her big girl bed also.

I was in the same situation you are in. I have a 5 year old girl and a 3 year old boy. To make the transition for my daughter, we made a really big deal about her having her own big-girl bed. We had gotten a toddler bed. At the time we weren't aware of a bed Ikea makes that goes from a toddler to big kid to twin size. (it has a modifiable mattress pad that comes with it.) It's a painted white wrought iron little bed. We have them now, they're great and inexpensive. Anyway, she loved the idea of setting up her own little space. We let her pick the blankets she wanted to use (from the ones we already had). It went relatively well. She got up in the night for a couple weeks, but we would put her back in bed right away. We had to sit with her for a few minutes so she'd feel secure again by herself. I wouldn't recommend a double bed for a toddler. The toddler beds are close to the ground and have enough room for them to get out of bed, but still have half rails at the top and bottom of the bed. Also, because a toddler bed is small and can use a crib mattress, the transition to the toddler bed isn't as big/traumatic. I hope all works out for you! It's not easy initially, but the work is well worth the end result. :)

My advice is to get newe bedding with whatever characters or colors she's into, and make the whole transition very exciting. If you're nervous about it, she'll sense that. So just hype it up as if it's a really fun, exciting priviledge and she'll likely pick up on that vibe and follow right along. If she feels insecure in such a large bed, you can try putting some firm pillows next to her, so she doesn't feel like it's so large. Or, you could try a trundle bed, so that she has a twin to sleep in, and you can pull out the other side when guests come to visit.

Everything I read when I was exploring the topic was to do the transition about 4 months before baby is due. That way you can have the transition worked out before baby arrives. So, that's what we did six months ago. We started with putting a mattress on the floor in my son's room next to his crib. We put a fitted sheet on it and a blanket/comforter. We also talked up how fun it was to sleep in a big boy bed every chance we got. We did our same routine at nighttime, the only thing that changed was we put him in the bed rather than the crib. After a week of sleeping on the mattress, we took the crib out of his room. We did reverse the lock on my son's door to keep him in his room until he fell asleep, then we unlocked the door. When we set up the second bedroom for our new baby (born in December) my oldest didn't have an attachment to the crib anymore and was fine with it being used for the new baby.

Hi A.,

My three year old climbed out of her crib at 14 months...so consider yourself lucky! We moved her to a toddler bed because our crib converted to one and we did not need the crib for a second baby yet. In your case I believe as long as you make it safe, a double bed is fine. A few safety things they recommend are to make sure it is up against a wall and to use bed rails to keep the other side safe. My cousin put a bunch of pillows on the floor next to her son’s bed, he was only 11 months, and it worked great.

As far as making the transition smooth…when we moved her to a real toddler bed, as we needed the crib when she was only 18 mo, we went to the store (Target) and picked out her bedding together). I took her a few times to be sure she was set on a specific character and then found it cheaper on line. I let her open it like it was a gift when it showed up in the mail, then one day I took down her crib and put her bed together and dressed it all up cute for her and she lit up like a Christmas tree when she saw it.

As far as keeping her in her bed…that is another story. If she is not crawling out of her crib then you may be surprised that she will stay in her bed once she is put to bed. Ours however after the initial fun passed was up every five minutes and we live in a two story house so it was way more exercise than I wanted, being six months pregnant. So we got the advice from a friend of using a baby gate on her door. This way I could hear her, she could hear me, I could still close the door at night and until she started climbing over it worked really well!

Good luck!

There is a very good book out by Dr. Ferber. He teaches the Ferber Method. It's a bit controversial, but it basically teaches you how to help your child comfort themselves. It's a technique we used when our son was about 8-9 months old. I used it during nap times, because at night I was too tired. it worked like a charm and he started sleeping on his own in his bed. Good luck!- J.

My daughter turned 3 in Dec. 2007 and transitioned into her twin bed in Sept. 2007 at about 2 3/4 years old. I think she could have done it sooner, but we had a baby who was born in June 2007. I'd heard alot about regression when a baby arrives, so decided to wait until after he came to move her into the bed. (I also waited to potty train her until the same month we did the bed transition - post-new baby - and that worked out just fine too). She then decided to give the new baby her own crib as he grew out of the bassinet, so the positioning of that worked out nicely. Not sure if this info. will help you, but sharing since the timing of your new baby sounds the same as ours. If I were you, I'd wait until after you have the baby if possible. You're so exhausted with a newborn, if there is regression with your toddler, you probably won't want to deal with it on 2 hours sleep a night. Plus, newborn won't need the crib for 4-6 months, so your toddler can keep using it. I don't see any reason why a double bed would be bad. I would use it if I were you. I never used bed rails on my daughter's bed. I put pillows on the floor the first two weeks just in case (and she did fall down once but was fine). Otherwise she has only fallen out one other time and it was recently on a night when she was completely exhausted and sleeping really hard I think (she was fine and doesn't remember it at all). To make the transition easier...my daughter spent the night at her cousin's house who is 4. Her cousin had a big girl twin bed. After that night, my daughter REALLY wanted her own bed too. We had talked about the transition for so many months as well, plus this night at her cousin's, that by the time we actually bought the bed she was totally excited. We never had to do the going in and out numerous times. We just put her to bed, stayed with her for a bit until she fell asleep and left. I think talking about it, seeing her cousin, and her age are reasons why it went so well. She also has a pretty easy going disposition as well, so that helped too. Finally, as one more detail to make the transition exciting for her, I picked out two bedding sets that I liked, brought them home, and let her make the final choice. She got to pick one of the pillows from my bed to use as her own new big pillow. That's it. Good luck!

We moved my son into a full size bed (against the wall with a rail for safety) at 16 months since he was climbing out of his crib. We talked it up for a couple of weeks and allowed him to pick the theme for his new big boy room so he would be more excited about it. He did really well for a couple of weeks, then realized he could get up and sneak down the hall and linger behind the corner and listen to us talking in the evenings. We ended up putting a baby gate at his door since we didn't want to close the door on him and freak him out. He was upset about that for a few days, but then went right back to his old sleep patterns. What we like most about the bed (he is 4 now) is that when he is sick, or has had a bad dream, one of us can lay down with him comfortably for a little while then easily get up and return to our own bed without disturbing him. It has made it easy to keep him out of our bed and in his own bed. Even after the arrival of his sister when he was 29 months, he did fine in the big bed. He no longer needs the gate on his door (hasn't for over a year) but still likes us to close it at night anyways. (He is able to open it now by himself to go to the bathroom). The only thing we did go through with him a few months after introducing the new bed was him making lots of requests at bedtime, but I think that is fairly common with all almost 2 yr olds. We just stuck to our routine and told him he only got one request per night and it stopped pretty quickly. Oh yeah, and we just put the boxspring and mattress directly on the floor, so the bed was easy for him to get in and out of by himself. We are finally thinking about putting them on a frame now that he is four, but mostly because we want the storage space underneath. Each kid is different, but our son was so proud to be in a big boy bed that the transition was very easy. If she has any older friends, you can take her to their houses to show her their big girl beds to help convince her if she isn't so sure. Hope this helps. Good luck.

Absolutely, I don't see any problems, and a lot of good reasons for the double bed for your daughter. We did a similar thing when my second baby was on her way, so I have some related experience. One thing that was cute was that my older child really enjoyed having ALL her stuffed animals on the bed with her . . . and so it made the bed (almost) crowded by the pillow. But that worked too, because she would arrange them (kept it neater) and didn't feel lonely. Have fun!