Could Use Some Advise on My 3 Year Old....

Hi, I am a 24 year old stay-at-home mom as well with a three year old and a 15 month old. My husband and I have been married less than a year. With my little girl we just put a gate up in her doorway (tall enough that she couldn't easily climb it) so if she did get up, she couldn't leave the room.

my almost 5 yr old still does it some times. all you can do is just do what you are doing and keep it up. I have found though that if I close my daughters door she is less likely to get up in the middle of the night also we have music on in her room on repeat so it plays all night long. If we forget eather of those she is more likely to get up.

A few suggestions:
1. Put a gate on his room.
2. Lock your door.
3. Reward him for staying in his room all night (and for not calling you to come in his room). In the morning, he gets a sticker if he stayed in bed all night. After he gets a certain number of stickers, he gets a treat he has been wanting.
4. Sit next to his bed while he goes to sleep. Each night, move a little closer to the door until you are out of his room.
5. Has he recently moved out of the crib? Move him back to the crib for a little while. We had to do this with my dgt who is almost 3. We turned her crib into a toddler bed. She kept getting up and would not even lie down long enough to go to sleep. We tried new sheets and everything. Finally, I told her if she did not stay in her bed, Daddy would put her baby bed back together. He did. After a couple of weeks, we tried again and she did great!
I hope these ideas help. Good luck!

What I do and it seems to work pretty good, is I put up a baby gate at his bedroom door. He has not yet climbed over it...The main reason I did this because are stairs in our house scare me to death. Try it...it has been a life saver for us.

hello S.

We have a 3 yr old and he comes to our room sometimes and usually he is wet and may lay with us for security and then will go back to his bed. But he really loves his car bed. i am 27 and have two boys. and my husband is a nurse to i understand the schooling. Good luck. you can email me at ____@____.com i live in dayton, tn i moved here from tampa, fl about 4 months ago. Sincerely, A. D.

Why is he getting up? Are there monsters under his bed? Is he scared of the dark? Is someone tapping on his window at night? Look for the cause of why he is appearing in your room in the night. Oh and if you answered yes to any of the above here are the solutions. Monsters? Get a can of air freshener and wrap it in plain paper then write "Monster Spray" on it. That makes the monsters go away better than any bug spray. lol
Dark? Give him his own flashlight (the rechargeable work best) so when he gets scared he can turn it on. This works better than a nightlight because he controls it. Tapping? Check and see if there is a tree rubbing against the window and trim it back some.

I have been going through the same thing with my son for a year now. He started a little before 3 and is now going on 4. The putting him back to bed trick has not worked or the child gate. (he can take it down) I have even tried letting him choose where his furniture goes in his room and his bedding. These things have not worked for me but may work for you. Good luck.

I really don't know what to tell you about this situation. My son is 6 years old. I guess it is really not a problem for me because it has just been me and him. My sister was having the same problem with her two year old. I just told her to just keep putting her back in the bed. It took almost a month but she does not get out. Every blue moon she might but that is to be expected with children.

C.

I have figured out that my daughter falls out of the bed and gets woke up by it and then comes to my room...so I started placing a large stuffed animal on the side of the bed and push her pillow close to the wall. This has really helped. Also, the vent was blowing air straight on her. Can you sleep with air blowing in your face. Take a look around the room and figure out if there is anything that might be waking him up. Does his window face the street? There could be someone that gets up and goes to work in the middle of the night and when they start there car it wakes him but you may not hear it.

My son is 5 yrs. old and once every few weeks still wants to come upstairs to sleep with us. However, when he was three, he continiously was up at night creeping around the house or to our bedroom. I finally had to put a doorknob cover on his door on the inside. It took only a few weeks of him knocking on the door, and he gave up. Although, right before he gave up, I put a t.v. in his room to watch cartoons to fall asleep. I know there is alot of contraversy over t.v. watching, but when you're at your witts end and your child walks out of his bedroom 10 times after just putting him down for weeks, you have to try everything. I guess he felt safer for some reason with his t.v. in his room, and to this day he always goes to sleep within minutes with his t.v. on. I have a really good nightlight to light up his whole room too, and no stuffed animals sitting around starring at him in bed.He also has his favorite stuffed animal he sleeps wtih.

S.,

My daughter is 2 1/2 and we are going thru the same thing. She will go to bed in her bed, but she gets up in the middle of the night and comes down stairs to our room. We will put her back in her room and she will go crazy. She just won't stay in there. We have tried everything and nothing seems to work. Some of the things we have tried was rewarding her when she stayed in bed. We have also tried putting up a gate, which didn't work. She climbed over it. We tried shutting the door, she opened it. SO now were are trying a chart system. Every time she stays in her room she gets a sticker. For so many stickers she gets to do something she likes. For instance once they get 2 stickers they get their toe nails painted, for 4 they get their fingernails painted and so on. We told our daughter that if she gets 5 stickers this week then we will take her for ice cream. Try whatever he likes. Also try to include your little one. We have a 7 month old and for every night she stays in bed (which is every night) she gets a sticker too. I am hoping that the one will see her sister getting stickers every night and will want to start earning them too. This is only our second week of doing the chart, so I don't know how successful it is yet. Let me know what works for you. YOu can e-mail me at ____@____.com are desperate too:)

S.,
My daughter is 7 and we just got her out of our bed. I told her durning the day that she needed to be in her own room and sleep in her own bed. So one night she got in her bed, my husband tucked her in and read her a book, she stayed there all night and in the morning I made such a big deal about her sleeping in her own bed she does it every night.

i use doorknob covers to keep my 3 year-old in his room at night. you can probably find them anywhere you find babyproofing items.

Maybe he is afraid that he has been replaced! I'm assuming the baby is in there with you. It is hard for a little one to understand why there are different rules for different people. Is it important to YOU that he stay in his bed? Or is it just something you've been told is important? Work out what feels right to you. I have two daughters - the oldest stayed in her bed - the youngest we fought with every night. Now they are grown with little ones of their own - and trying to figure what works best for them. You sound like a loving family. Relax and enjoy your babies.

I also used a baby gate when my first child started getting out of bed a lot at night. It did the trick for us. HTH!

We went through this when our son was three, also. On the advice of our pediatrician we put down a pallet on the floor of our bedroom every night and told him he could come and sleep there if he woke up. That way we could all get some sleep, because we were simply exhausted after doing the "put him back in his room" thing for a month, sometimes several times a night. After a week or so of that, we offered bribes. On nights that he didn't utilize the pallet, he got a little reward, with consecutive nights adding up to a big reward. It eventually worked. But I have to warn you that, even now at 6-1/2 he still sometimes wakes up and comes in our room. He's just wired differently than our other son who can sleep through anything!

Hi,my name is T..I have a 5 yr. old and I had the same prob.Maybe if you have some room for a toddler bed in your room,he might get used to sleeping on it, then if he sleeps through the night,offer lots praise {your such a big boy and such}maybe even little rewards.Then if that starts to work then you could try putting his bed back in his room.

S.,

I just wanted to say Thanks for your post. My son will be three in Dec and we are dealing with the same issue. He goes to sleep in his bed at night but always comes to get in bed with us.

We also have a 6 month old son as well and figured he was getting in the bed with us because he saw his little brother sleeping in our room, next to our bed. The baby has since moved to his own room and won't sleep with us at night.

Again, Thanks for the post, I have learned a lot from the advice you have been given. I am going to try some of the advice given to you so that my husband and I can snuggle all night without a 2 1/2 year old in our bed.

Hi S.. My husband and I are dealing with the same problem. My daughter will be four next month.
I have been told to establish a bedtime routine and stick to it. I also have tried to skip most of her naps. This seems to help on occasion.
Keep me posted on your progress.
Good luck.
A. A.
Stay-at-home Mom to Madilyn and expecting in February. Also new to the area.