Reply to if your 3 year old loved their crib...

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[quote=Anonymous]I forced the issue but I wouldn't say DD loved her crib. She didn't dislike it but she was also excited to sleep in her big kid bed. When she moved to her big kid bed, she had some sad feelings about not being the crib anymore. We removed the crib more quickly than you because we needed the space, and she was sad about it. Change is hard for kids this age and they don't have that many spaces that are "theirs". The crib is one. We validated her feelings and explained that the crib was for a smaller child, but that it went to another family with a baby who could use it. She was sad for a while but eventually moved on.

One thing I definitely would NOT do is try to use either the crib or big kid bed as a threat for staying in bed. Like I would not tell him "if you get out of bed at night you have to go back to your crib" or "if you climb out of your crib then we will take it away and you have to sleep in the big kid bed." I would not make either bed a punishment. That will make the situation much worse.

Sometimes kids have big feelings or are sad or disappointed. It's fine, those are normal feelings. Your job as a parent is to help them figure out how to deal with those feelings. This might mean listening to your kid talk about how sad they are about moving out of their crib. I think the instinct of many adults in that situation is to internally roll their eyes at this (it's just a bed, who cares). That's when it's time to practice empathy and recognize for your kid, it IS a big deal and that it's okay they feel this way.

But also as a parent you have to make decisions beyond the scope of what your kid might understand at the moment. We moved our kid for practical and safety reasons. Once a child can crawl out of their crib, I just don't feel it is the right place for them, even if they generally don't do it. We could have delayed it a year or so, I think, but then I think we would have spent most of that year stressing about whether or not she was crawling out of her bed. So even though she was very sad about it, I have zero regrets about moving her when we did. It's okay for kids to go through difficult things, you just have to help them.[/quote]

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