According to my sources (this is what my wife told me), there isn’t a concrete plan on when to best remove a child from their crib into a normal bed. A lot of people make the transition when they have a second child coming, because they don’t want to buy a crib. I would have totally been this way, but I’m pretty sure we’re one and done. It was one of those things that I didn’t really give much thought to, because I’m a big believer in staying the course if things are working. But my little man had ideas of his own.
One afternoon, my wife put him down for a nap, and she could tell he was up to something on the monitor so she rushed into my office to have me watch. Sure enough, that man threw one leg over the railing, hung out for a second, realized what was going on, and threw the other leg over the railing before landing on his feet outside of the bed. It seemed innocent enough at first. He paused, got a stuffed animal, and hopped right back in bed. Perfect, now he could go to sleep.
But that man couldn’t get the thought out of his mind. He had escaped the crib, and sure, he put himself back in, but why? Why keep yourself in a cage when you have the key to escape? So he hopped out and decided that he should push things further, and this time, instead of coming back into his crib, he opened the door from his bedroom and cruised out to the playroom as if nothing was amiss. It wasn’t nap time, silly parents, it was play time.
He acted like nothing was wrong, but things were very much wrong. We needed him to rest and to give us time to rest, and he had flipped that script on his head as the bars that contained him were now seen as opportunities for true freedom.
So we had to pivot. The crib could no longer contain this manbeast, so to the big bed he would go. We were ready for this day as he has always had a daybed with a trundle in his room, so we pulled out the trundle and decided to give him an opportunity to sleep in a big boy bed.
It hasn’t been smooth exactly, but we’re making progress. At first, my wife tried, and it was a failure. So then, they bring in the heavy hitter, the nap master, Dad. I read him stories, he let me know he was ready for bed, so I put him down, turned the sound machine on, and headed on my way. I watched him on the monitor, and this man just couldn’t help himself. He sat there for a while, got bored, climbed up on the daybed and turned on the light. He likely would have left his room, but we child proofed the doorknob to lock him in there. So I went in and explained that he had to stay in his bed and not turn on the lights. Then, once he wakes up, we can watch Blaze and the Monster Machines, but not before that. He seemed to understand this time and although he sat up for a while, he eventually laid down and went to sleep. Success. And right when he woke up and my wife got him, he immediately told her that he could watch Blaze since he went to sleep. Good on him, he earned it.
But those successes have been outnumbered by the failures as we are still working our way into a groove. During naptimes, he’s mostly a maniac. We moved the crib out so we could put the daybed away from the lightswitch, so this guy decided to carry his beanbag over, climb it, and then turn on the lights. But he has at least learned to have quiet time even if he isn’t napping so that’s progress since he was nearly expelled from daycare for being too rowdy during naptime. One afternoon, he actually “read” to himself for a half hour before falling asleep next to his bed with the light on.
We’re seeing progress with the naps. The night time sleeps are happening, but they are not happening throughout the entire night. We tried to keep him in the crib for the night until one night he went on a protest where he sat down in his bed for two hours, refusing to lay his head down. Finally, my wife came in to check on him, and he said he no longer wanted to sleep in the crib. His protest was successful as that is when we decided the crib was no longer needed.
Although he will fall asleep at night, he wakes up in the middle and screams for his Mommy. He’s been pretty damn persistent about it too, so Mom has to go in and snuggle with him for a while until he falls asleep, and then she escapes out the door to try to get more sleep. I manage to completely sleep through all of this on most nights. We both basically have internal settings that I can sleep through anything before 3 AM, and my wife sleeps through anything after 3 AM. I’ve had many early mornings, but she’s getting the short end of the stick currently. Not that it would totally matter either way, because he is adamant on who he wants to see in the middle of the night, and a Daddy substitute simply wouldn’t suffice.
He now has Blaze and the Monster Machines bedding, which made him more excited for bedtime, but I don’t know how much excitement you want to add to the activity of sleep. We’re still working on that first night of uninterrupted sleep, but we have no choice at this point. He’s moved on from the crib and is now a big bed boy. If he’s anything like his Dad, he’ll turn into an air mattress adolescent (I was in my 20s, but I was never known for my maturity). Let’s just hope he doesn’t settle for a futon future, and manages to become a a king size mattress man.
Actually, let’s just hope he starts sleeping through the night. He might have matured into a boy, but I’ll settle for baby steps.