Hellobee

Why on earth did I think it was a good idea to introduce 18-month old Patrick to the toddler bed last August? Because he kept getting stuck. If I was too busy with a then five-month old Olivia, I would start to hear crying. Patrick would be perched precariously on the corner of his crib rails and didn’t know how to get back down into the crib or proceed in his escape. This went on for about a week before I finally decided to take the plunge and ordered the conversion kit for Patrick’s crib.

I began to talk myself into the whole experience as I waited impatiently for the conversion kit to arrive. I began to tell Mr. Bear how big Patrick was getting and how much his understanding had improved. He was ready.

I went to bed like a child at Christmas the night the toddler rails arrived. After all, tomorrow my son would have a ‘big boy’ bed. He would be able to climb in and out of bed without any help. Saturday dawned bright and early in our household and off came the front of Patrick’s crib, and up went the toddler rails. It was done in ten minutes.

I admit — I was so proud of my little man. As soon as we got the front of the crib off, he started climbing in and bouncing on his bed. He was excited for this new change too and why not? Freedom and lots of it! Patrick spent the next half hour just climbing in and out of his bed. When it became clear that he was very tired, I said it was nap time. I gave him his pacifier, his blanket, and he leaned on the mattress. I picked him up, laid him down, turned on his dog and walked out of his room. And he slept in his bed for three hours, not stirring.

Then when he woke up, Patrick played in his crib for a few minutes, grabbed his blanket, climbed out, went over to the door, and jiggled the handle. Sweet and simple. My mom pride went through the roof. I couldn’t believe how good Patrick had been… how easy it was. Then of course came bedtime with half an hour of crying big ugly crocodile tears. Of Patrick getting out of bed and us having to come back in to usher him back into bed. Us urging him to stay, sleep, good-night and none of it worked. I let him roam around the room, knock over toys, and instead of getting bored and heading back to bed, he would come to the door and jiggle it. Or stuff his blanket underneath the crack in the hopes we would grab it. But we didn’t play and did our best to ignore his antics.

Finally, Mr. Bear told me that we had tried. If he had the capacity to understand what bedtime meant (which I was convinced he did), to follow orders and understand consequences, it would be different. But he hadn’t shown that level of understanding yet. The simple fact is he just wasn’t ready. Just because he could climb out of the crib didn’t mean he was ready for toddler rails. If nothing else, we knew he could sleep in a bed with toddler rails for naps.

T A K E  T W O

A month had passed and while Patrick hadn’t tried to climb out of his crib, he had been trying to climb in to Olivia’s crib repeatedly. I thought maybe it was time. Maybe if I gave him the freedom to climb in and out of his bed, he wouldn’t try to climb into her crib. So I pulled his toddler rails out of my closet, grabbed the wrench, and went to work. I was sure that this time would work.

And you know what? It did! Now Patrick was almost 20 months old. The first few days were hell but we worked through it.

We went through the normal bedtime routine that evening and left the room. I placed a piece of tape over the locking mechanism of the door so he wouldn’t be able to shut his door (like he had been doing all day with his new found freedom but it was more like slamming). We said good night and put the safety gate up across the doorway. He ran back and forth just like the first time, impish, gloating that he could disobey us and be out of bed if he wasn’t ready to go down. Then he tried closing the door – only to find that he couldn’t. This lead to a meltdown of sorts, which we ignored. He was fine, we were mostly in sight in the living room, going about our business. This too caused some whining but after an hour, Patrick quietly climbed into bed and fell asleep.

Patrick slept all night without a peep. Internally I cheered and shouted when I went in to check on him and found him contently curled up in his bed. The next day when we tried to get him to take a nap, we were met with some resistance. I’m glad it was a long weekend as Mr. Bear could help me put Patrick down as often as necessary. Honestly I can’t tell you how many times we had to coax him back to bed that weekend. But we eventually found that if we put him in bed with his blanket and pacifier, turned on the dog with its music (just like we did before the toddler rails) he would usually play quietly in his room if he wasn’t ready to sleep until he was tired.

The only real issue we’ve encountered with the transition was the time Patrick fell out of bed a week later. But my mother, brilliant woman that she is, bought us a pool noodle on clearance. I cut it to fit the entire length of his toddler bed and stuffed it under his sheet. We never had another problem with him falling out of his bed.

We abandoned the safety gate after a few nights of use. We’d put it up after putting him down for the night and then take it down again before we retired to bed so that in an emergency, we could easily get to his room. That routine got old really fast so we invested in the safety covers for door knobs  and placed one on the inside of Patrick’s door. It meant we could open the door easily from the outside but it kept him from wandering out of his room after we had put him to bed.

First day in twin bed. (We eventually took the box springs off to make it easier to climb in and out of bed.)

It’s been nearly a year since we initially introduced Patrick to the toddler rails, and I’m happy to report that everything has been going swimmingly. We moved him from his toddler bed into a twin-sized bed with toddler rails right before his second birthday because Olivia needed his crib. And midway through this past June we got rid of the toddler rails completely. We’ll hang on to them for Olivia when she gets bigger (and I am NOT looking forward to that transition) but for now, our toddler rail journey is over and it feels so good to call it a success!

When did you start to transition your toddler to a “big kid” bed? How did it go for you?