Toddler Won't Sleep in Her Bed

I am a grandmother of a 26 mo. old. The best thing to do is (from the advice of my daughter) put the child in their room, make sure the things around her are safe so no accidents can occur. Close the door and let the child alone. Now the crying,yelling and screaming may rip out your heart. Wait an hour or so. Go into the room when child falls asleep. If the child is sleeping on the floor(as my granddaughter did a few times)pick them up and put them into their bed. When they wake up a fews days in a row in their OWN bed they will learn that this is their place to sleep. I went through this for a few days. Each day the temper of my grand daughter grew shorter and the sleep habits got easier. At the age of 2yrs she is now put into her bed, given a kiss and off to sleep she goes ALL BY HERSELF. It's all routine and habit thats has to be treated the same way every night. It's a learned behavior...Good Luck!

Is it that she never sleeps in her bed or that something has happened in the past couple of weeks?

We had to get my son really excited about his bed. We switched him to a bunk bed from his toddler bed. He's all about tunnels and forts, so we draped a sheet down from the top bunk to make him a snug little tunnel as he calls it.

There are still many nights when he falls asleep elsewhere and we put him in his bed afterwards.

i just put the toddler bed right next to my bed...i had matching sheets, duvets, etc, so it wasn't too much of an eyesore. i will sleep with my kid, but i sure as hell am not having icky kid print linens in my bedroom! :) seriously, i have never understood how or why people get so worked up about having wee kids sleep away from their parents. they hate it, it makes many parents' evenings a nightmare, and letting little people cry until they exhaust themselves is just cruel. much easier, healthier, and sooo much cuddlier & happier if they can just sleep near you!

We tried everything with our son, what ultimately worked was placing his toddler bed right by our bed for a few weeks and once he got used to sleeping in it we moved it away from the our bed (a few feet) then eventually to his room where we would sit with him until he fell asleep.

I don't know if you've seen my posts about the same thing in the last few weeks but here's what I've been doing and it doesn't seem too bad. I have a 20 month old who began crawling out of her crib a few weeks ago and to prevent her from hurting herself, I went ahead and turned her crib into her "big girl" bed and equipped it with her favorite character sheets, pillow and blanket...DORA! I had to call my mother about it because when I was trying it out on my own, I was getting stressed out about it (my boyfriend, my daughter's father was no help in the middle of the night either) and she told me that my sister and I never went to bed until about 10pm. So, at about 9pm, I turn on her personal DVD player with Dora on it to wind her down and at 10 (or close to it), we go to her room, I change her, and she hops into bed and I read to her (she loves it and expects me to read to her) a book or two, then I turn off the reading light and sit close by her bed (not to where she can see me though), don't look at her and she usually tosses and turns, flips her pillow over a few times to get comfortable and then usually falls asleep by 10:30. The key is if they get out of the bed, take them right back to it without saying a word, sit there for awhile (I know it's hard in the middle of the night when you are tired, too), don't look at them, sing to them if needed (that works for me sometimes even though I can't carry a tune). I hope this helps for you. Let me know if it helps because I certainly got no responses from ANYONE on here about my problem. Maybe we can keep each other sane by sharing experiences with what works and what doesn't. SO far, it has begun to work more and more and she has slept through the night for two nights now...knock on wood she keeps it up. Good luck. Keep in touch. My E-Mail address is ____@____.com if you want to E-Mail me that way.

E. B.

thanks for posting, i was just getting ready to ask for the same advice with my 3 yr old. thanks to all the replies, i am going to try some of these tips tonight

Wow! Just had a flashback of about a year ago!!! The key is patience. My husband and I completely redecorated our son's room for his second birthday in his choice of theme and let him help. Once we did this he was intrigued by sleeping in his "new" toddler bed and his "new" room. It was still difficult because he wanted to sleep in his room, but whent he time actually came he was having trouble. What we did was lay him in the bed and just sit in the dark with him, without speaking or making any eye contact, until he was asleep. It was time-consumming, but each night it took less and less time before he'd fall asleep. Finally after a couple of weeks were able to just put him down to bed. Sometimes he will still get up during the evening before he falls asleep and we just walk him into his room and tuck him in and he's good to go!! Hope this helps and good luck!!