So it’s time to move your sweet pea from her baby crib to her new toddler bed and you’re freaking out about how to manage the change. Let me reassure you that children are actually quite robust and resilient. In fact, it’s these little life struggles that help build up their ‘psychological muscle’ as they discover for themselves that they can cope and manage in the ever-expanding world.
When to move? My general child guidance rule is to continually foster his or her progress towards autonomy and mastery. The sooner they can go from bottle to cup, high chair to booster and likewise, crib to bed—the better.
If you have a new baby on the way, it’s recommended you take down the crib and have it out of sight for a time before moving it into the baby’s nursery (and perhaps changing up the bumper pads). If you can’t pull that off, no worries. Trust your older child to make the adjustment and learn to share, because there’s a lot more of that coming!
Ask your child to join you shopping so they can help pick their new bedding for the new bed. Often they’re so excited to sleep in the Spider-Man/princess sheets, they don’t mind passing down their old crib to the new baby.
How do you know when it’s time? If your tot is a real monkey and starts scaling the sides, you should make the move. Don’t risk a tumble over the top rail—simply keep the railing down so the crib becomes a day bed. Teach them to crawl in and out of it safely on their own.
Ah yes, now they’re not contained anymore. No need to panic. Install a baby gate at their bedroom doorway. This serves to enlarge the area they are contained in from their crib to their whole room. Make sure you’ve child-proofed the room before this step, however.
With the gate in place, you can tuck them in, say your good nights and if they crawl out of the crib and stand at their doorway calling for you, so be it. Treat it the same as if they were in their crib. They may fall asleep on the floor instead of their crib, but that will only be for a few nights while they discover this new limit. Once asleep, you can move them back to their bed or cover them with a blanket.
My daughter Lucy transitioned by keeping her crib mattress and sheets but dropped on the floor, futon style. For both my girls, there was a time when they had their new bed set up and old crib (side down) still in their room. I simply let them pick where they wanted to sleep. They both chose to start with naps in the bed (with a side attachment to stop them from rolling off onto the floor) but both preferred their cribs at night for awhile.
When the crib finally has to come down, talk about it together, mark it on the calendar a week in advance so they know the big day is coming, and make a fun event of disassembling it together.
You hear stories of people potty training their children by age 9, 10, 11 or 12 months. Really? At those tender ages, I suspect it not the child who is potty trained, but rather the parents.
A potty trained parent is a parent who has learned to notice their child’s body language and run to put a potty under them and ‘catch a pee’. I don’t see the point of that, myself. My definition of a potty trained child is a child who has the ability to recognize when they need to ‘go’, the sphincter strength and control to ‘hold’ until they can get to the toilet, the manual dexterity to unzip, unbuckle, strip down and actually ‘go’ independently; and then to wipe up, wash hands, and return to what they were doing. Amazing right?
So there are a lot of skills, physical maturation and psychological readiness required. It will take some time. On average, most children start training somewhere in the beginning of their second year and finish sometime by the end of the third year. Girls usually train before boys, and the order tends to be day dryness, day BM’s, night BM’s and finally night dryness which may not be accomplished until the child is age 6, 7 or 8. (Heredity is a factor here.)
So with that in mind, rather than trying to get your 18 month-old to use the potty to make a pee and getting into a fight, which will invite resistance and slow your efforts down, let me suggest the things we can be doing to help set the ground work for later successful training. To reduce confusion, let’s not call it ‘Potty Training’. Instead, let’s say we’re helping establish ‘Potty Readiness’. Sound good?
From about 18 months, you can work on this list of activities with your child;
Stay positive! Stay light hearted.
Thanks!
I’m also trying to train my 2 1/2 year old daughter to go potty, and it on and off. One week she is doing amazing, and the next she’ll refuse.
Happy to help! Good luck with these starter steps!
Comments
Alyson.
Big fan of your book - Breaking the Good Mom Myth….in fact I’ve recommended to several moms I know.
I wanted to bring up a few points in regards to your article “From Crib to Bed”.
You mentioned bumper pads in your article. I work as a birth and postpartum doula and advise against the use of these. Many health agencies and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) awareness groups are now recommending that parents skip the crib bumper, saying the need for crib bumpers has passed and that using these products may actually put children at greater risk for suffocation or SIDS.
I would also like to bring up the idea of co-sleeping as an option for families. Studies show that sleep training (in the case of the new baby) leads to higher stress and lower seratonin levels in a baby. Recent research shows that baby’s are safest when sleeping within arms reach of their mother as to respond to each others sensory signals and cues. Below, I’ve inlcuded a link that provides further information on the benefits of co-sleeping.
I hope your readers will find this information useful. I look forward to reading more of your books and articles in the future.
Kindly,
Marlo
Interesting, except that most cribs don’t have a drop-down gate anymore as this is not CSA approved anymore. Looks like most of us will just have to deal with lots of “ups and downs” with the big girl/boy bed right off the bat.