Moving to a "Big Kid" Bed

My advise is to wait longer before you transition her. Personally I think that two is still to young to be able to get out of bed by herself. Is she potty trained? I was always told that the right time to transition them to a toddler bed is when they are potty training so they are able to get up to use the bathroom. My daughter is 19 months and even the littlest thing in her crib can keep her from falling asleep so I can't even imagine her having access to her whole room. If she sleep good in her crib them I would say don't mess with a good thing. She might also be too young to understand that just because you can get out of bed that you can play. She need to be able to understand the concept of bedtime. I would give it a little more time and them try it again when she is a little older. There is no time limit on when your child needs to be in a big kid bed so make sure that she is ready before you make the big move.

Our son is three and a half and still in his crib. He knows how to crawl out and get in but hasn't done it. I'm constantly thinking about how/when to transition him to a big boy bed but I don't feel a strong need to. He's happy in his crib and we're happy to keep him there.

DON'T until you HAVE to! LOL!
My son started crawling out after his second birthday. Now we have to lock him in his room in order to keep him in there. We tried all the tricks and bribes...silent returns all night long...laying until he went to sleep...
You name it. And everything backfired eventually.

So, we reversed the handle on his door, and usually, after some protest every night, he goes to sleep on his own.
I would've happily kept him in that crib until he was 6! :) I didn't know how good I had it!

My daughter-in-law put the bed on the floor and put a gate in the doorway so she could play and not get hurt and you could hear her and it worked like a charm. She also put a little dvd player in my grandsons room to get him to settle down and watch a movie as he falls asleep. Of course she needs to be a little tired so she will lay down and hopefully sleep.

N.

I will tell you what our pediatrician said to us... don't take him out until you absolutely have to! My son is closer to 3 than 2 and is still in his crib. He doesn't climb out b/c I don't think it's really occured to him to try and he still fits in it, so we'll give it a whirl in the next month or so.

I'm not sure why your toddler needs a sense of independence and control based on her crib. There are a lot of other ways to do that! You can build choices into her day and give her other ways to explore her independence. Keep in mind that once you take her out of her crib and she can get out of her room, you have a whole different level of child-proofing to go through.

We moved our son just after he turned 2, and my daughter (who will be 2 next month) is not getting out any time soon! I don't think that she is ready, and I don't need her getting up - she is that type of kid! If you take toys out of her room, that might be helpful. With our son, we told him that he was not allowed off his bed (which at that time was a mattress on the floor for safety reasons) unless he called us and we came to get him - 3 years later and he is just starting to come out of his room without asking. But, he is the easy one! You could try putting a few stuffed animals, books or other quiet toys right next to her bed so she can play with them without getting up. Or, delay the transition if she isn't ready!

We started over the holidays moving my daughter to her big girl bed. I will disclaim this by saying my kiddo is just about 18 months old. This may seem young but she was ready. She asked for bed, would get frustrated if we didn't get to the bed to put her into it, etc. Also, we're having a c-section in a few days to deliver our second baby so when my little one showed interest in a big girl bed we jumped at the opportunity to not have to lift her into the crib anymore. The first 3 weeks or so were awesome. She stayed in bed, went to sleep efficiently, though naps did suffer. Then BAM! Everything fell apart when she realized she really could get out of bed. :-P

Naps have -always- been tricky for us so I set a time limit. "Naptime" is 2 hours even if it takes her 45 minutes to go to sleep. I did this more for my own sanity than hers. There have been days she just wouldn't go down and I needed to know for myself how long to keep at it.

Bedtime is a lot easier for us because you keep trying until, well, morning.

Our (hopefully) winning solution was defining for her bed and play. She loves her pacy and blanket. If she gets out of bed, we don't let her take the items with her. In fact, we take them away. I give her one minute of complaining and then tell her to 'lay down', which means in bed, laying down, on her pillow. Then I give everything back and tuck her back in.

Before anyone yells, trust me, I was nervous about this approach. It seems harsh. What I can say though is we went from it taking her 45 minutes to go down IF she went at all to 11 minutes down with an hour and a half or longer nap - consistently. I normally only have to pull the pacy once.

Oh, we have an Itzbeen timer. So I run one timer for the overall naptime and one timer for the "session". This lets me know, for example, that today it took her 4 minutes after I laid her down before she got up the first time, when I lay her back down I reset the session timer. So now I can glance at my timer and see that today took us about 12 minutes overall to get to sleep. VERY useful information if you want to track how your method is working.

I'm so proud of my daughter. We've used this method for almost two weeks now and not only is she consistently getting a nap again (something that had stopped during the 3 week honeymoon period) but she went to bed immediately last night, no fussing or playing at all.

We have found her curled up on her blanket in the hallway a couple times and my DH will help her back to bed, but otherwise she doesn't wander - and even if she wanted to we put the baby gate up between the bedrooms' hallway and the rest of the house.

I have to say, this was one of the best things we did for our family. My daughter feels like she has some independence and we get a few extra minutes of sleep every morning since she doesn't wake up and yell. She just comes and cuddles us awake. :-D

GOOD LUCK!

Not sure how big your house is, but my sons room is just a place to sleep and store his clothes-no toys, only books. We didnt transition him into the big bed till he was 3 since he never climbed out. He is 3.5 now and only climbs out to go potty. Maybe making her room with less to do will help her to realize her room is to sleep in, not to play in?? Just my thought!