My 2.5 year old has stolen my bed...I want it BACK.

[mrsr]

Hi all. My 2.5 year old has stolen my bed. He flatly refuses to stay in his bed and is co-sleeping most nights with us. I end up getting up and going to sleep in his bed and he and DH sleep together. I'm not getting quality sleep and I need some ideas to help him stay in bed. He's on the bottom bunk with his 9 year old brother on the top bunk. I was wondering if the wriggling and squirming could wake him on nights other than when he flatly refuses to sleep in his bed.

We did have a wooden gate up, but he managed to break that and also climb over it to get out. I suppose the other option is to get a better, higher gate to get him to stay in his room at night. OR...put him into a single bed?

So...I WANT MY BED BACK!!!

[YoYo]

I hear you...im a bit tired of musical beds!.

[Fig]

I don't know what you have tried so far...we take our 3 year old back to her room, give her a cuddle then leave, well DH does. If I do it, she crys because she knows mum is a soft touch. Sometimes she manages to sneak into the bed in the middle of the night without us knowing, so she does still sleep with us at times.

We have tried so many things over the last 6 months or so...we put a bed in our room and told her that she could sleep in that bed but not ours. That worked for awhile until she started getting up at 9:00pm wanting to go to her bed in our room. Then my DH slept on a mattress on her floor in her room for awhile. That worked for a short time, till she started hoping out of bed and crawling into the mattress on the floor.

So now when she comes into the room DH takes her back to her bed. Sometimes it can be 4 times a night.

Goodluck, i hope you find something that works.

[tinkerbelle]

Hi there
Definitely the noise and movement factor of the bunk beds would be worth looking into. Your bubba might be better in his own bed if one of the issues is that he is waking frequently at night. If you cant even get him into his own room to begin with, then these types of issues are quite challenging and often help from a psychologist can be quite useful as the techniques used to help these issues can be quite complex and its good if you and your partner can have some sort of emotional support when doing them - you also both need to be in agreement about whats the best way to tackle the issue and both be using the same methods EVERY SINGLE TIME to address the problem, otherwise change will not happen. Its often not also not an issue with the child (unless there is some sort of anxiety that needs to be addressed). But more so what usually needs to be addressed is how the parents or family is responding to the child's demands and what behaviours have been allowed to become routine, which can be difficult to break and quite stressful for the parents (and child). Thats why I think it is good to have a professional assessment to work out what techniques will best suit your family, circumstances and environment.
Often when you try and address sleep issues, they can become much worse before they become better which is why its good to have some professional support. Also, the longer the patterns go on and are established, the more difficult they are to break so the sooner you can get onto it, the better.
There are many types of methods and techniques you could try and you could research the net, but in my experience parents really do need the professional support to carry them out as they will often get quite frustrated, find it difficult to carry them out successfully when they are sleep deprived themselves, and will often give up or give in to the child many times before committing to a plan of change, because it is not an easy problem to tackle.
So I guess my best advice would be - if you can afford to see a psychologist, I would really recommend it. If not, then I am sure your local child health nurse might know of some resources you can tap into?