When upgrading our toddler from a cot to a bed, how do we keep him in his bed?

Question

We want to convert our son's cot into a bed this weekend (starting Friday evening). We think it's time to transition because he often tries to climb out (but fails yet), and during daytime playing he manages to climb in by leaning a pillow against the outside of the cot - but he cannot climb out again because the mattress is very low.

Our biggest problem is that our son is very likely to NOT stay in his bed because he is extremely energetic (compared to other toddlers we know) despite our best efforts to have a calming bedtime routine. We've tried earlier to take out the removable spokes from the cot but had to put them back in because he wouldn't stay in his cot. This time, we're considering to put up a gate in his room's door just to keep his freedom limited, but that might not be the best solution.

Question:
What is the best way to train staying in bed, when there are no bars to keep him in bed?

We're hoping that he will stay in bed once he does fall asleep, although he moves a lot in his sleep so some nights he'll probably end up on the play mattress in front of the bed (less than 15cm lower, so no safety risk). Our focus now is on getting him to stay in the bed for long enough to fall asleep in the first place.

(There's only one earlier question along the same lines, but not as specific as I hope this one is.)

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Update:
This really hasn't gone so well yet. He never gets out of bed during the night, but falling asleep alone is a big problem -- he requires one of us to be present in his room until he sleeps. Even though we provide no interaction, just presence, it's still problematic for us because it usually takes 30 minutes and often more, up to an hour. This is not a good use of our very limited evening time.

We have just started a new attempt, following HedgeMage's advice here ("put him to bed again without interaction, and again, again"), but without much luck so far. It takes him more than an hour of this to exhaust himself to the point of sleep. My wife is not convinced of this method, but I'm advocating that we do this for a week before giving up.

I hope to be able to post a success story soon, but stay tuned...

Answer 1

We just upgraded our toddler from a crib to a toddler bed, and we were concerned for the same reasons. There are a few toys and lots of books in her room, and we weren't sure how she would do.

I guess we got lucky because she didn't have any problem staying in bed as she was falling asleep. However, she usually wakes up 30-60 minutes before we get her out of her room for the day. When she was in the crib, she had no choice but to stay in bed. But with the toddler bed, she was free to get up, move around, and play with anything accessible when she woke up in the morning.

Here is how we handled it.

1. We gated the room. You said this might not be the best solution, but I see no problem with it. The gate is not there for punishment, you are simply trying to help him understand that his room is where he is supposed to be when it's time to sleep.
2. We put the toys in the closet. We did not want toys to be the reason our toddler got out of bed, so we moved the toy bin to the closet during the night. In fact, that has become its permanent place--we pull it out as needed during the day, and put it back when we're done.
3. We left the books out. Our daughter loves books, so we considered putting them in the closet at night as well. In the end, however, we decided not to. If our daughter is going to be awake in her room for an hour before we get her, we figure that books aren't a problem at all. Now when we come to get her out of her room for the day, we typically find her on her bed with 3 or 4 books.

As I mentioned, we haven't had many problems getting our toddler to stay in bed when she's falling asleep. If this is a concern for your toddler, one potential solution is stories and/or songs alongside his bed to calm him down after he's tucked in.

If after your best efforts he is still not staying in bed, I wouldn't worry about it too much. In the short term, his exhaustion will eventually overpower his stubbornness. In the long term, if you are consistent with the bedtime routine he will eventually learn to stay in bed.

Answer 2

Sorry to not accept either of the two given answers, but they don't really match what turned out to work for us. What did work was HedgeMage's answer to "When should I transition a 2 year old toddler from the cot to a bed?"

We did not gate the room, we did not fill the bed with toys. We kept putting him back to bed.

Answer 3

We used two mechanisms:

• First, the controlled crying, as HedgeMage suggested. We had varying results with this - we had much higher success with our second and third children than the first, but for all three it was certainly hard for us. All the guidance we had was that the child wouldn't mind, but we found it very stressful.

• Of much greater utility - the full size beds we bought were cot beds; set up so initially they have side rails which can be removed when the child gets bigger. Because these were full size beds we wanted to fill the extra space so added a lot of toys, and we found they would often play with a couple of favourite toys for a short while then put themselves back to sleep.

I think it just seemed like a friendly space for them once we had their toys in.