Let me start off with a little background. We have had the hardest time getting Brady to stay in his bed when it's time to go to sleep. It all started last Fall when he learned how to climb out of his crib. We went through 1 night of him climbing out over and over again and then decided it was time for him to go to a toddler bed.
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| Here he is last August waking up from a nap in his toddler bed. |
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| New bedding for Christmas 2010 |
The whole time that he was in his toddler bed, we struggled with bedtime. He refused to stay in his bed. As soon as we would put him down, he would be out of bed in one or two seconds. We tried the "Supernanny" method, we tried putting a gate at the door, we tried rewards, we tried bribing, we tried spanking, you name it we tried it. Finanlly, we got tired and decided to move him up to a full size bed. At least this way, we could lay down with him and hope that he would lay down with us.
Here are some pictures of that transition. In case you haven't noticed, Brady's crib was one of those lifetime cribs, where it was a crib, a toddler bed and a full size bed all in one.
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| Disassembled toddler bed |
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| Disassembled toddler bed |
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| Adding the rails to make it a full size bed |
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| Lookin' good Daddy! |
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| With the mattress on |
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| New bedding and all! |
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| Finished product |
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| Another angle |
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| And yet another angle |
He pretty much did exactly as we expected with the full size bed. He stayed in bed as long as we layed down with him. The problem with that was we ended up having to lay down with him until he fell asleep (which was sometimes more than an hour) every single night. That wasn't really ideal either.
Then, I read a book called "The Sleepeasy Solution: The Exhausted Parent's Guide to Getting Your Child to Sleep from Birth to Age 5"
One of the suggestions in this book was to create a hand-drawn book of the bedtime routine and the bedtime rules. Well, I'm not very good at drawing, but I know how much Brady loves to look at pictures, so I had an idea to create a book on Shutterfly for his bedtime routine and rules. Guess what folks? It worked!!! Since we got this book and started reading it everynight, Brady has been doing so good at staying in bed and going to sleep on his own.
I have to admit that out of all the challenges we've faced since Brady was born, this has been our most difficult parenting challenge yet. I am so thankful to have found something that works and so I want to share our solution with everyone I know, in case it is able to help someone else too. Here is the photo book that we created. It turned out so cute and not only did it help us tremendously, but now we have an awesome keepsake that I know we will cherish for many [well rested] year's to come.
Shutterfly
photo books offer a variety of layouts and cover options to choose from.
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