Destructive Crib Climber

You have a real talented climber it sounds like. I will let others give the suggestiong on how to stop him but PLEASE, get the brackets to hook his dresser to the wall. Since he is pulling the drawers out it wont be long and he will be climbing in them like stairs to get on top of the dresser soon. It wont take much to tip the dresser over on top of him, which can and has been deadly to many toddlers. Please hook it to the wall so he cant. Its easy. L brackets and a few screws. It can save his life until you find a way to stop him from climbing.

As active as he is a crib tent isn't advisable, the manufacturers say this themselves because children have strangled in them climbing out of cribs (my grandson's ped had a patient who this happened to.)

I'm assuming his mattress is at the lowest point of the crib and there's no bumper pad or pillows for him to stand on. Get brackets for his dressers, secure blind cords out of his reach, put toys high in his closet, remove as much as you can from his room and put up a baby gate (or stack one on top of the other across his bedroom door since he's a climber.) You're doing this for his safety as he doesn't have the knowledge or restraint yet to not seek and destroy. Plan on staying up as long as it takes and as many nights as it takes to return him to bed until he gets that he's to lay in bed to go to sleep and not get out and play. The key is to be consistent and he'll eventually learn.

I do not have any suggestions other than trying a crib tent. I just wanted to suggest, in case you have not done so, to secure the furniture to the walls. My daughter has a doll house bookshelf my husband made years ago, it is about 5 foot tall. He has it secured in case she ever tried to climb on the shelves. Also, not just his dressers, but any bookshelf, or large tvs, etc in your home.

Good luck, hopefully this is a phase he will outgrow and soon! :)

I remember the night I looked to my side and saw my son standing next to me, after climbing out. For the next week, my husband & I had to sit outside his door & every time he climbed out , put him back in bed. I think the 1st night, we were at it for around 3 hrs. Each night was shorter and shorter until he decide he would just end up in his crib again. Good luck with however you decide to handle it.

Why not the crib tent? i have been using one (from One Step Ahead) for my 27 month old since June and it has succeeded in keeping him safe, and me sane. I had tried converting his crib to a toddler bed but he was in and out of it wfar too often. He cried the first 2 nights with the tent, but now he cries if I DON'T zip it up.

Both my 2.5 yr. old twins would be getting out of their cribs if I hadn't decided to remove the slats that were holding the mattress up. I have their mattresses and bottom frames resting on the floor with the "crib" still around them - sort of a comfortable "playpen" for them that continues to keep them secure.

We went through this when my daughter was around that age. We ended up putting her in a twin mattress and box spring on the floor and moved her dresser into the closet and locked the closet. I baby proofed everything and got a $100 video monitor. When it was nap or bed time I'd explain the rules and then watch on the monitor. If she did something she wasn't supposed to do I went in and gave her a timeout in her timeout chair. She's a quick learner with timeouts, so it worked well for us. But I think the video monitor and constant monitoring is key until the kinks are worked out. Any reason you don't want to try a crib tent?